In my first semester, on the second physics class, the teacher asked two students to come to the front of the class and answer questions about last week's lesson. It only being our second week in Riga, we weren't at all prepared. No one knew what to read in e-studies, as there was loads of information and we didn't know what was important. Therefore, one of them failed the defence and had to redo it later in the semester.
This blog post I will explain to you what the physics defence is. I will also somewhat try to explain how to prepare for it.
If this sounds like your nightmare, I understand. No one likes doing the defence. But don't worry, you'll only have two semesters of physics...
What is a defence?
In short, a defence is when the physics teacher asks you to come to the front of the class in the beginning of the class and answer questions about last week's lab protocol and topic. You will have to do this once in a semester, and it will be graded. The amount of questions the teacher asks, and the depth you have to go to all varies teacher to teacher. I had two different teachers in physics. The first one's defences lasted around 5-10 minutes. The second one's around 30 minutes. The first one required you to answer questions alone, the second one asked questions from both of you and you answered what you knew. So, it varies.
The grade of the defence matters as much as your midterm, colloquium and seminar. Everything has an equal weight when it comes to your final grade. And you want to get an average of 7 in everything in order to not have to do the exam.
How do I prepare for the defence?
I have a few tips. I got a nine and 10 on my defences. I didn't do any physics in upper secondary (high school), so all the topics we covered these two semesters were new to me.
At every week's topic in e-studies, there is a pdf called "Qs for discussion...". I suggest you learn these, because understanding the answers to these questions usually means you have a good general understanding of the topic. Often the questions will also be similar to these questions. My first teacher basically only asked these questions, but the second asked different ones. So I wouldn't only learn to answer these, but understand the topics of these questions fairly well.
There is also "An informative Youtube playlist..." in the e-studies. I'd say this was very useful for me when it came to my physics studies.
What kind of questions will the defence have?
Like I stated earlier, some of the questions are about the lab protocol, some about the topic. Usually the first question they ask is "What did we do last week? What was the aim of the work?". The answer to this question you can quite literally find in the lab report:
Be prepared to say it in your own words though, because if you just say what it reads there, the teacher might ask you to specify what you meant.
Other questions might be:
"How did you do this?"
"Do your results match with theoretical data?" (you need to answer based on the values such as absolute error etc.)
"What does [[value in data, e.g. Relative error]] mean? What does your value in that mean?"
They will also ask generic questions about the topic. If you can't answer all questions, sometimes the teacher will give you another chance to get more points by asking another question.
Should I stress about the defence?
Short answer, no. Longer answer... Most people stress about it for little reason. The teachers aren't horrible, and don't want you to fail. Usually being nice to the teacher also grants you better chance of doing well. If you're scared of being picked randomly, just volunteer. Because then you know you're prepared.
Personally, I volunteered to go the first week, because after that I no longer had to stress about being randomly picked!
I believe with this information, you will be fine. Many stress about the dreaded physics defence, but in the end it will be fine. Honestly, the sooner you do it the better. Then you no longer need to stress about it.
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