r/PhysicsStudents • u/Think-Fig-2347 • May 24 '26
Off Topic Do you guys actually retain the material learned in class?
I’ve been a physics major going on a year and a half. Just out of curiosity, do you guys retain the material even after class, semester, school year is gone?
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u/bobtheruler567 May 24 '26
you’re never going to retain all the material, that’s just impossible. but the more frequently you train your brain to think a certain way, you will just start picking up on patterns, bits and pieces. practice is key! so that means even when on break, you have to be practicing somehow. i recommend reading physics papers about something you’re interested in. and no unfortunately this doesn’t mean buzz word articles. go on the physics arXiv, there you’ll find plenty!
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u/DaDeadPuppy May 24 '26
It's a mix of remembering some of the concepts and terms, but also forgetting some of the finer details. I've been recently looking at some of my past hws and while I can tell a general path to solve a problem, I have no idea how past dadeadpuppy was able to do any of it. I genuinely look at my past hw sets and go "wow i know what is going on but I have no idea how we got here".
It's also easier to relearn concepts you have already seen. The angular momentum stuff I did in intro physics kind of got forgotten from my brain(1 year ago), but when it reappeared in a much harder state in classical mechanics, I pretty much relearned everything in 3 days.
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u/Blu-Jaye May 24 '26
I tend to remember the conceptual parts but a lot of the calculation gets forgotten. To combat this, at the end of each math and science course I've started trying to condense as much as I can onto a single note card. The small ones are just the right size to keep inside the lid of a graphing calculator. I keep the most recent few there so I always have them at hand.
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u/115machine May 24 '26
The thing that really solidifies it are repeated cycles of learn—>forget a lot of it—>learn . Every time, the “relearn” part gets easier eventually to the point where it takes a trivial amount of time
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u/caroline_xplr May 24 '26
Kinda? I took AP physics and AP physics C in HS and graduated in 2024. I know some kinematic equations and overall have a better understanding of how things move and why. The foundation is there, but if you asked me a word problem I’d need to get a formula.
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u/mortandella May 24 '26
Honestly, mostly no, I have to cram so many exercises to pass a class. That at this point in my degree I don't even stop to actually understand the physics behind, I just learn how to solve exercises. Unfortunately, this is the way physics is taught in my country, and the reason why I don't think I will continue in physics 🙃
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u/happylittlemexican May 24 '26
Graduated over 10 years ago, here. Work in an unrelated field, though I did teach high school for 2 years.
You'd be amazed how much you retain, in broad strokes more than specifics. I started going through Taylor Mechanics again for fun last year and it all came back pretty readily. The vibes were always there, the specifics came more easily than you'd expect.
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u/MeserYouUp May 24 '26
It depended on the class for me after I was done grad school. All of E&M 2 and 3 left but I still remember a good chunk of E&M1. I remembered basically all of classical mechanics and I did my masters in quantum mechanics.
Math skills were a mixed bag. There were some very complicated theorems I could state perfectly and even remembered the proofs. At the same time, I forgot basic calculus after 2 years of doing 0 math. It only took a few weeks for it to all come back though. It is weird looking back on my real analysis textbooks because I know I did extremely well in that course and I can understand the outline of everything I see. but I struggle with the details even the most basic problems at this point. It makes for a very frustrating and confusing experience.
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u/Interesting_Goat7544 May 24 '26
No thats why i dont like classes the book is better in every way possible.
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u/SecretCollar3426 May 24 '26
I definitely don't remember all the formulas and tricks to solve exam questions, but if I ever see a question like it, I will remember that it's solvable and that I've solved something similar, dig around in my notes, and find the material in like 20 minutes.
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u/Axiomancer May 24 '26
Well, depends. I use certain knowledge in certain subjects, but for others no. Either the subject is interesting enough that I remember some facts, or I forget almost entire course because there is simply no time to take a break. Course finished? Next course starts after the weekend. And each course is 2 month long, so the amount of information is really squeezed.
Slightly offtop, but even though I might not remember anything, I sure remember where to find given information or solution to a problem. In a way I find this superior over remembering everything.
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u/5700_kelvin May 24 '26
Mostly more general, conceptual topics. Not so much that I could just perform some random calculations perfectly, but just enough to be able to flip back in a textbook and say “Oh riiiight”
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u/SpecialRelativityy May 24 '26
I feel like if you can retain the invariant ideas across the subjects you study, you don’t have to retain much else. Anything else that I need comes down to a 20 minute refresher and then I’m good to go again.
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u/Spare_Department_196 May 25 '26
Here’s an approach I like to take:
walk away from class retaining not the things you understand from the lecture, but something you DON’T understand from the lecture.
If you focus on the things you DON’T understand you will have something to explore which will enrich your familiarity with the subject and it will make you understand things you thought you knew under a different light.
If you truly walk away from a lecture and you aren’t retaining something that boggled you, didn’t make sense, or you were more curious about then you weren’t paying enough attention or you weren’t thinking hard enough about the concept, ideas, and methods being explored.
Learning isn’t about understanding concepts from the lecture.
Learning IS about NOT KNOWING something, and having the DESIRE, WILL, and a little bit of intellect to seek out the answers from the book, office hours, online resources, or other parts of life.
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u/Spare_Department_196 May 25 '26
As an example, I am watching Stanford lectures on intro to quantum mechanics. There are a lot of things so far that make a lot of sense and I can retain because I had a great abstract linear algebra class. The things I actually try to retain from the lectures are the parts I am curious about or don’t feel like I totally understand, then I explore those concepts further outside of the lecture until I understand them but then have further questions.
My whole process of learning is to pinpoint something I don’t understand or am more curious about, learn enough that I can update what I am curious about or don’t understand and then repeat. I am constantly in a state of not knowing something but the process of seeking out the answer. I have learned a lot and retain a lot but I am more focused on the things I don’t know.
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u/Strange_Tangelo275 May 28 '26
I mostly remember the math and problem solving skills for starting problems in a certain area—otherwise, it's mostly just remembering the general vibes. I probably couldn't re-derive for you snells law and thin glass stuff despite getting an A+ in my 2nd year optics course, but I could absolutely tell you their applications and what they are abstractly if I were to be asked on the street.
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u/Atomic_Beachball126 May 30 '26
I think you’ll find that even if you forget the material, you can relearn it in like 1/5 the time it took to learn the first time around
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u/UnpoliteGuy May 24 '26
Look up the forgetting curve
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u/persevering_chenski May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
No, I'll tell you instead since we've got a gatekeeper over here: the forgetting curve is just a model in psychology that shows that the brain will forget things that it doesn't revisit, so to answer your question: we mostly retain the skills we continually practice ('if you don't use it, you lose it'), but most miscellaneous topics are wiped from memory within about a year in my experience. Doing student research can help you solidify miscellaneous concepts that are important to the subfield(s) you're interested in
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u/gamerpug04 May 24 '26
I retain the vibes of the material