Physics GRE Discussion Forums

Hi all,

I've posted on this forum several times about a Physics GRE book, "Conquering the Physics GRE", which has been in progress for a while. I'm happy to announce that the book is finally available! Currently, individual chapters are available for $3 on our website, http://physicsgreprep.com/reviews.html, along with the sample exams and solutions at http://physicsgreprep.com/sampleexams.html which have been up for a year but are now in finalized revised versions.

UPDATE:The whole book, with all the reviews, tests, and solutions, is now available for $49.99 on Amazon: Conquering the Physics GRE (isbn=1479274631).

For those of you taking the October GRE, you might want to consider looking at the chapters now, especially if you've already bought the sample exams and don't want to pay for them again in book form.

Good luck, and please do send us any errors you find, or any comments at all!

Yoni for http://www.physicsgreprep.com

YF17A wrote:Hi all,

please do send us any errors you find

On the page http://physicsgreprep.com/reviews.html , you wrote "Foreward" instead of "Foreword".

Thank you, fixed.

Not to sell your work short but I'd probably only get it if it were a little cheaper (~30 dollars).

Good luck with book sales, regardless.

From a tyro:
I tried your first mock test, and found it pretty hard compared to ETS' five tests available. It looks like you tried to reproduce ETS' patterns, but often with some details that make the problems tougher. I had the feeling that not a single question on this test was solvable by dimensional analysis, and that there was a more-than-usual amount of "topical" questions like astrophysics and so on. Also, ETS tends to put questions in "packets" of same subject, which makes it easier compared to a random order like yours.

Not sure if I will buy another mock test from you. Your level seems alright for a "practice-10-km-to-run-5" philosophy, though.

Hi,

Thanks for your comments.

I had the feeling that not a single question on this test was solvable by dimensional analysis

If you look at the most recently released test from 2008, you'll see that with one exception, no question on this exam is entirely solvable by dimensional analysis either (the graph reading question #41 being the exception). Indeed, the trend in recent GRE's seems to allow you to eliminate a couple answer choices by dimensional analysis (GRE '08 questions 7, 10, 12, etc), or to forbid dimensional analysis by giving answer choices the same units (22, 26, 40, etc). Our tests try to reproduce this pattern. However, there are quite a few questions on our Sample Exam 1 which can be solved by just a combination of dimensional analysis and limiting cases: 39 and 84 in particular.

and that there was a more-than-usual amount of "topical" questions like astrophysics and so on

Our exams reproduce the content distribution given by ETS to within +/- 1 question. You may be right that we had more astro questions than condensed matter in the special topics section, but for special topics, really anything is fair game and you'll get hit with a good deal of random trivia on the real exam.

Also, ETS tends to put questions in "packets" of same subject, which makes it easier compared to a random order like yours.

The "packets" you talk about are typically 2-4 questions in length drawn from the same subject area. Looking back at our exams, you're right that we tend to stick to blocks of 2, rather than 3 or 4. But no one says you have to do the questions in order! You're free to go through the exam only doing classical mechanics, then E+M, or however you choose.

YF17A,

I'm sure you guys have fixed it by now, but if not, number 46 on the first sample test had the wrong solution. It's even dimensionally incorrect. There's a missing $$\omega_{f}^{2}$$ of the rotating wheel that can be related to $$v_{f}$$ of the falling mass in the conservation of energy relation.


Other than that there were some good questions on there.

Indeed, there was an error in problem 46 on what we labeled exam 1.1.1, in both the exam and the solution. That has been fixed in version 1.1.2, in both the individual documents and the full book. Glad you found some of the questions useful!

hello, thanks for your book.. It has helped me find all the review materials in one place.
I have found a few errors in there and I list them here for you. I will post more if I find them

-page 124 line 3 misspell energy
-page 123 equation 4.12 is incorrect it contains one extra rotational degree of freedom and missing the vibrational kinetic degree of freedom ( the total number of degrees is correct however they are the wrong ones)
page 20 question 2: solution on page 47 is incorrect
it needs to say:$$I=\int _0^{2\pi }\int _0^{\pi }\int _0^RA r(r \text{Sin}[\theta ])^2r^2\text{Sin}[\theta ]drd\theta d\phi =\frac{4}{9} A \pi R^6$$
-page 67 question 2 answer d needs to read : $$\frac{2\pi \epsilon _0 l}{\ln \left(\frac{b}{a}\right)}$$ to be dimentionally consistent and give the correct answer. also the question needs to include the length of the capacitor call it l to be complete.
-page 67 question 3 needs to say $$d<< a$$ to be the correct assumption
-page 73 equation 2.34 needs to read :$$\overset{\to }{B_2}{}^{\parallel }-\overset{\to }{B_1}{}^{\parallel }=\mu _0\overset{\to }{K}\times \hat{n}$$
-page 81 problem 1. the correct answer is A instead of B since the electric field of a pure dipole is proportional to $$\frac{1}{r^3}$$
-page 84 equation at the bottom of the page needs to read $$\overset{\to }{E_2}{}^{\parallel }-\overset{\to }{E_1}{}^{\parallel }=0$$
-page 89 the RL circuit equation needs to read $$I=\frac{V}{R}\left(1-\exp \left(-\frac{R}{L}t\right)\right)$$
-page 155 question 4. none of the answers are correct since the energies of quantum harmonic oscillator go as $$\left(n_x+n_y+n_z+\frac{1}{2}\right)\hbar \omega$$ and can therefore not have full integer value of $$3\hbar \omega$$
-page 214 solution to number 3 needs to read "p goes imaginary when $$E<3m c^2$$

These were the ones that I found so far.. I will post other corrections if I find them.

Just received my new "Conquering the physics gre" book in the mail. I must first comment on the quality of the printing materials. I was really impressed. I feared it may have been just a bunch of pdf files.

I cant wait to get studying it. I will take the Pgre in april 2013. I will update later on.

But I am very impressed with the book.

I wanted some feed back on new physics gre book from people who used it to study for the test.
Let me know what you guys think.


Has anyone used exclusively Halliday and Resnick to prepare for the exam.
I did buy the Conquering physics book. I notice some topics are left out like Van der Waals equation, and other Gas law relations. Should I expect not to see stuff with Ideal gases?

http://www.amazon.com/Conquering-Physic ... hysics+gre

hi all.I am new.I am from Iran.M.sc medical physic I want to get Gre exam but I can not buy books because of my country policy please help me

@Meysam Dadgar, if you can't get access to the book, there is still a lot of useful information available throughout this forum. Four practice tests are provided in links on this page.

@Everyone - Who here has used the "Conquering the Physics GRE" book? It's been out for a while so a good number of you have probably used it. What did you think about it?

i think. conquering the physics gre was a good book

i was happy with my score. i could retake but i think i will focus on the important. qualifying exams we will need.to takw

I took the PGRE on October 25th and used the Conquering book to prepare. I thought it was great and a time-saver since it highlighted the key aspects of each topic. For example, instead of reading a textbook and learning all of thermodynamics, I could just review the 10 or so pages of material in the Conquering book and be prepared for the test. It isn't the greatest for learning and understanding physics, but it is probably the best book out there specifically for preparation for the PGRE.

The practice questions and exams were definitely harder than the released ETS exams, but I found it to be beneficial in that I knew that if I did well on their practice tests than I would be prepared for the actual test.

For some perspective, before I prepared I was around 59% (2001 exam), and after 1 month with this book I was 80% (2008 exam).

Just to add to my above comment:

After starting with a 59% (720) on my first practice exam and using this conquering book to study, I received a 990 (94%) on the actual exam...I would say it was worth it.

Does anyone have a copy of the book they are willing to sell? I am taking the April exam and need it soon to study. I can pay you on paypal!