CWRU FLASHCARDS FOR THE PHYSICS ADVANCED PORTION OF THE GRE
To wonderful physics students everywhere (not just at CWRU!)
Through the years we have developed flashcards to help students prepare for the physics advanced GRE. The intention is to provide as best we can the background material, including those formulas you just need to know and don’t have time to derive. Our motivation was to address the omnipresent problem of students forgetting material, even forgetting basic formulas and descriptions. Many students have benefited from our efforts, including quite a few outside of our own Case Western Reserve University.
DISCLAIMER: Before we go further, we have heard that there are even top-ranked schools that do not believe physics GRE scores correlate well with success of their students in grad school. It is easy to find folks who believe the physics GRE measures some level of preparation, but perhaps not ability. Whether or not there is a strong correlation between the physics GRE and graduate school performance, many schools continue to rely on it in which case we want to help. Our flashcards are our attempt to help prepare people for the physics GRE and give them the background information they need. And while we’re in the mode of “disclaiming,” and since we are getting ready to tell you how to get our set of flashcards (for free!), we should say we have tried very hard to eliminate errors BUT there surely remain things that need to be improved. Let us know if and when you find any glitches – see below.
The advanced physics test has always been made up of 100 multiple-choice questions (with the usual labeling of a through e for the answers) on undergraduate physics material. It is scored in the usual way where the familiar correction is made with respect to random guessing, by subtracting one-fourth of the wrong answers (not including the questions left unanswered) from the number of right answers. Thus you benefit from guessing if you can rule out one or more answers.
We have well over 200 cards with questions on one side and answers on the other. We carefully studied the five past physics GRE exams made available for general study by the Princeton Review, plus a GRE sampler (a total of 531 problems) and developed cards to provide the necessary background for all those test questions.
To repeat ourselves, the important point we want to make about these cards is that the test-taker must remember many definitions, formulas, and phenomena. If she does not remember, for example, what the Zeeman effect is, she can only guess at a problem involving that effect. As another example, she should not take time to derive the two-slit interference formula, d sin θ = n λ for the maxima. She should just know it by heart! Indeed, there are only 1.7 minutes per problem for the 2 hour and 50 minute exam.
The subject list and the number of problems devoted to each subject for the 1992 GRE test have been reported by the people who make up the exam as follows (out of 100).
Classical mechanics = 22 problems
Electromagnetism = 21 problems
Quantum mechanics = 22 problems
Thermodynamics and statistical mechanics = 11 problems
Optics = 8 problems (mostly wave optics, very little ray/geometric optics)
Relativity = 5 problems
Nuclear and particle physics = 5 problems
Solid state physics = 2 problems
Miscellaneous = 4 problems
Note, however, that simple cosmology and fluid dynamics questions have also appeared in recent exams. Correlated with this, the numbers of cards for a little broader list of subjects in our Version 2011 set of cards are as follows:
Classical mechanics = 22 cards
Electromagnetism = 27 cards
Quantum mechanics and atomic physics = 34 cards
Thermal physics = 26 cards
Relativity = 16 cards
Oscillations = 14 cards
Wave optics = 15 cards
Ray optics = 26 cards
Laboratory and electronics = 16 cards
Condensed matter physics = 13 cards
Nuclear and particle physics = 20 cards
Mathematics and statistics = 10 cards
Cosmology = 9 cards
Fluid physics = 4 cards
It is seen that topics with smaller numbers of problems still have a fair number of cards. This is largely due to our attempt to help the students study material that they in fact may not even have much exposure to at this time in their coursework. The cards are labeled by subject, and numbered within each subject. (i.e. the Thermal Physics flashcards are labeled 1T-26T).
Testimonial
The
GRE flashcards were immensely helpful to me. After taking one
practice test and looking over the flashcards, I could immediately
tell what subjects I needed to study most. The flashcards are
organized by subject, so it was easy to find the flashcards that
would help me most. I studied the flashcards between practice exams,
and I saw my raw score improve by 20 points in a very short amount of
time! I was incredibly happy with my actual GRE physics score, and I
know that the flashcards contributed immensely to my success. – GKK
(Gareth Kafka BS 2010)
If you want a set of flashcards, we would like to present them as our gift to you. You don’t even have to pay the mailing costs. To try to avoid bulk requests, especially for those who like the idea but really don’t have the time or inclination to sit down and really work on them and memorize them, and also because we’d like to use this opportunity to tell students from outside CWRU about the wonderful world of physics here (a few extra cards illustrate some fun CWRU facts), please send your name, postal address, and email address to the following CWRU email address:
physicsGREFlashCards@phys.cwru.edu
CWRU students can use the same email address to ask where to pick up the cards in person.
Best luck on the physics GRE if you’re taking it, and, really, best luck in everything. (And remember to let us know if you find any card that seems to have an error in it!)
Doc Brown (robert.brown@case.edu)
CWRU Physics Department
P.S. We are working on putting the flashcards onto a smart-phone app! Look for it!