ThePhysicist was initially planned to be a Physics blog that aimed to provide everything in Physics to everyone in Physics. To achieve the vision, ThePhysicist has been expanded from the idea of being only a blog to a full fledged website with content and features for those who are interested in Physics, viz, enthusiasts, students and researchers. ThePhysicist aims to establish continuity among the levels of its audience through well crafted posts, materials, classes, news and research tools. The aspiration here is to provide a single platform to educators, learners and researchers in Science in general and Physics in specificity. Not only that the content on ThePhysicist shall be unique and empowering for the readers, subscribers and visitors, but also that if some new, interesting and useful content is available elsewhere on the internet, it finds a special mention on ThePhysicist.
Here, at least in India, the field of education has been divided into two categories. One that sells and one that doesn’t. Both of these categories have been cursed by an invisible and unknown spell. In neither of these categories, education means integrating knowledge into the person’s existence. Instead, what really happens is, a lot of time, money and effort are being spent to install knowledge into a special folder inside the volatile memory of the aspirant. Then the aspirant is made to practice enough through repetition so that the folder makes enough copies inside the long term memory to ensure that some of the installed information is retained for a long time. That folder necessarily remains out of access for all other functions of life of the person, except for reproducing the folder content in a predetermined examination. For the education that sells, for example, medical, engineering, PSU, MBA and law entrance exams, etc., the exams are competitive. For the education that doesn’t sell, the exams are just academic diploma or degree exams.
Science, as a subject, is a slight exception to the two categories mentioned above. It doesn’t sell but the students of Science, e.g., those in BSc or MSc, have to face tough competitive entrance examinations in order to get into higher education in reputed institutes that offer scholarship or fellowship. These students have two choices; either to join a coaching institute or to prepare on their own. Both of these options are equally tough.
With only a few good coaching institutes that exist in India purely for science, students have to travel far and wide to be able to attend to their classroom courses. However, it is important to note that there are a few institutes such as Physics by Fiziks and Career Endeavour that offer quality classroom coaching for a very reasonable tuition fee (ThePhysicist will come up with reviews of more such institutes in the forthcoming posts soon). The courses are run for about 10 months. So, more than the tuition fee, the students end up spending more to support their living not to mention the additional burden of getting psychologically adjusted to life in a new city. This makes a lot of deserving students to underperform compared to their competence.
When a student goes for preparation on their own, without any expert guidance or a well strategised plan, there are enough voids to absorb the student’s time and energy. It is very easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer toughness of the challenge and eventually lose track. Moreover, in view of the recent times of the global pandemic caused by the novel Coronavirus or COVID-19, it is not an overstatement to say that the traditional classroom model of education is susceptible to more interruptions than previously imagined. The obvious solution for students in such times and conditions is online education. But, the Indian education system, in both public and private sectors, is not well designed to provide a streamlined and well guided online education to the masses when it comes to a disciplined and structured preparation for the competitive examinations in Science, especially for those where Physics is a key or sole paper.
This is where ThePhysicist is working harder and shall be doing so persistently, to provide able assistance to all the students, especially those who live in remote areas and don’t have good classroom coaching options. ThePhysicist is committed to helping students prepare better in Physics for various competitive exams such as KVPY, NSEP, INPhO, IPhO, NSEA, INAO, IAO, JEE, NEET, NGPE, JAM, GATE, TIFR, NET, JEST, GRE Physics subject test and Advanced Placement Physics.
In the coming posts, specific features on ThePhysicist will be described in detail so that you will be able to choose the ones that suit your needs easily. For now, please surf the site and read the news headlines to stay updated with the world of science.
