[shelbs]

I took this course Winter 2014 with Dr. Dowling. I really liked it and found it very fair in terms of difficulty, especially if you have taken physics 1b03 and feel relatively comfortable with the material. I actually enjoy physics and did well in 1b03 (although I did take it in the summer so it wasn't as bad as people make it out to be) so that was one reason why I was interested in this course.

We covered:
-Torque
-Static equilibrium
-Pulleys, levers and gears (didn't spend much time on this)
-Friction
-Linear and angular kinematics (which was new to me but the prof was great and made it very easy)
-Projectiles
-Fluid mechanics (no calculation with this, just conceptual stuff)
-Moment of inertia
-3D forces and kinematics (including cross product and multiplication of vectors which was the most advanced/time consuming math we had to do)
-Mechanical energy, impulse-momentum, work-energy and power

The rest of the course was related to the body and biomechanics, not very physics oriented, more theory (and no calculations). This included topics such as: anthropometrics (calculating mass of limb segments, length of limb segments and location of the center of mass for limb segments using height and weight of subjects), exercise biomechanics (free weights vs. exercise machines and how said machines use pulleys and other techniques to try and make exercises as effective as possible throughout the full range of motion), as well as some tissue mechanics (how articular cartilage works, the different components of muscle including elastic and stretch components, etc., bone structure and repair) among other things.

There were a lot of different topics that we discussed but it was all very easy to understand and the professor (although a little disorganized and rushed) was very approachable and extremely accommodating. He supplied CD's for $2 that had all the practice questions and notes. This was very helpful because EVERYTHING he said/tested was in those notes so I was able to sit and listen during class instead of trying to write down everything he was saying.

The workload was very light because there were just two non-cumulative midterms (First was 20% and second was 30% because people generally do better on the second test, not because there is more material or it is more important) and a final exam. All of the evaluations were the same: M/C questions about theory, short answer questions with calculations and on the exam there were some short answer questions that dealt with theory as well. As a result, there was very little work to keep up with on a weekly basis (because there were no quizzes or assignments, etc.) With that said, most people would benefit from keeping up with the practice questions because Friday classes were used to go over questions that students were struggling with, sort of like a tutorial. This way you could get help with difficult concepts in advance of the tests.

Thanks shelbs,

do you think Grade 12 Physics will suffice for this course?

Hm, I don't really remember how in depth high school physics goes so it's hard to say, but physics (1L03 or 1B03) is a prerequisite and (I think) it would be unlikely that they would waive this requirement. Dr. Dowling made these courses prereqs because he wanted most of the physics to be review so that he could go through that material faster and get to all the interesting biomechanics topics. This course is essentially the second and third year kinesiology biomechanics courses combined into one course, so in order to get through all the material you need to go relatively quickly and therefore a good background in the physics is ideal.

Thanks for the review. Are there only two lectures per week with every friday lecture slot designated as some sort of a tutorial? Also, were the evaluations in this course set up similar to first year physics classes? (like 20 marks available for a 20% test so each mark is worth 1% of your final grade)

Thanks

Ya most of the Friday classes were utorial style and focused on going over the practice questions however if we got behind (which happened towards the end because we were essentially covering the content of two 3 unit kin courses) then Dr.Dowling used the Friday classes as lectures to catch up on course content.
And no- the tests were not like physics in that way. There were also short answer questions for the calculation questions and he was great about giving part marks. I think the tests were both out of 40 or so

Any recent reviews????

Hey All,

Took this course in Winter 2016. I'm not going to write a whole lot because the previous poster sums it up pretty accurately. I took the third year life science biomechanics course as well with Dr. Dowling btw.

Like I said, I agree with everything already written about this course; information is very straight forward, and if you review all the concepts in the lecture files he talks about in class, then you get out what you put in.

My advice for this course is 1) don't skip concepts you think are irrelevant - go over all concepts the professor goes over at the very least and 2) go to all tutorials/office sessions to ask all your questions!!!!!!!!

Are the physics concepts really hard for this class?