Why hire a physics tutor?
When a student struggles to understand any academic concept, especially physics, it can affect the student AND their parents. Does this sound like you? Hope is not lost, it can be different. Physics tutoring is the solution for your student. My students see immediate results in their confidence, problem-solving skills with a proven framework, improvement in classwork, and testing scores. With my proven tactics, your student's pain points will begin to fade and what will emerge will be a confident student ready to take on any physics problem or concept that comes their way.
The South Shore Physics Tutor's Approach
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Triage - Start with simple problems to reduce anxiety, restore confidence and establish rapport.
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Technique - Work on technique to gain the accuracy needed to avoid errors and successfully tackle harder problems.
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Practice - Practice problems to gain speed and accuracy. Just like sports, practice under the guidance of a coach or mentor is the path to consistently excellent performance.
I find that the majority of the time, my students understand physics very well. The issue lies in the need to strengthen the fundamentals. Oftentimes, errors come from issues in the algebra and basic sign errors. Lack of organization also contributes. Your student can overcome these obstacles with consistently approaching physics problems the same way every time. Once the basics are established and habits are formed, fewer errors are made and your student will be more efficient, solving problems faster than before. Once they realize that they can work the problem through to the solution, physics won't seem like an impossible subject and will be approached with confidence and an "I've got this!" attitude.​
It's more than just understanding physics.
Learning physics and its concepts can improve all aspects of your student's academic performance. Learning the approach to critical thinking and problem-solving carries over to all other coursework.
For example, math is the ‘language of physics.’ For many, physics creates a context in which math makes sense and becomes much easier to understand and learn. The structure, organization, and critical thinking developed in physics are also immensely helpful in writing and language, and it goes beyond academics to other endeavors such as sports, law, medicine, product development, engineering and science to name a few.
Applying Physics in the real world.
Elon Musk is in the news a lot these days, mostly because of his leadership in developing the Tesla electric car. The Tesla is the automotive equivalent of the Apple MacIntosh computer. Just as the Macintosh revolutionized personal computers, Tesla appears to be revolutionizing the automobile. But Musk has done much more. He built PayPal, SpaceX (a commercial space vehicle company), Solar City (one of the largest solar energy companies), and most recently, introduced the hyperloop concept. The Hyperloop is a land-based, train-like transportation system that travels faster than a typical passenger jet. He credits much of his remarkable success to the thinking framework he learned from physics. Listen to him describing it himself starting at about 18 minutes in this video.
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Legendary Olympic hurdler Edwin Moses says he applied information from other disciplines -- including physics and ballet -- to perfect his technique.
A fascinating physicist is the Nobel prize-winning Richard Feynman. While winning the Nobel prize may have made him famous among physicists, it was his work solving the mystery of the space shuttle Challenger explosion that made him a household name in the 1980's. He found that the cause of the accident was relatively simple to understand. NASA had developed a toxic culture that put the protection of bureaucrat's careers ahead of astronaut safety and appeared to be covering this up. Feynman's dramatic, easy to understand, demonstration on national television, forced major reforms of NASA, including the addition of a policy that only astronauts could authorize shuttle launches.