[nichelfish]

Hi guys,

I'm beginning a Physics degree with foundation year this September and I haven't studied all that much maths past GCSE level in a great deal of time. I'm confident in my ability to pick it up as I go but I want to make the most of my free summer to work on my maths as much as possible.

Is anybody able to recommend any good resources for self-tuition? Free online resources would be preferred but I don't mind buying a couple of books if it's going to be worth my while.

Thanks,

Nick

[heyimbored]

I imagine you'll be doing a lot of A level maths in a foundation year, so it would probably be most worthwhile picking up any A level textbooks. Calculus is a massive part of physics, and is a big part of pretty much all the core modules in A level maths, any mechanics modules are useful practise for applying maths to physics. Any of those books will be useful, or I'm sure there are plenty of online resources that you can get for free, and there'll be problems to practise with. I'd suggest solomon papers for problems, but they can be to a pretty high standard (stretching slightly beyond A level), so they wont necessarily be for you.

Your algebra skills will need to be up to scratch as well (and probably wont be covered so much), so make sure you can do that - students going on to do A level maths often get sent algebra questions to do over the summer/on a day in school before starting.

It would probably be a good idea to email whoever runs your foundation year and ask them if they have any recommended things to go over, or ask what books will be used in your foundation year. You can then get hold of them (as you may want to anyway), and get a head start.

[hypnosam]

Have a look at further maths by aqa. Thats very useful.

We used this in our first year http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0199249725. Though it varies course to course

[SpiggyTopes]

Google 'exam solutions', I can't express how amazing that website is in words!

[siani-chan]

(Original post by hypnosam)
Have a look at further maths by aqa. Thats very useful.

We used this in our first year http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0199249725. Though it varies course to course

I was just about to recommend this exact book. It wasn't on our reading list but I found the book they had on the reading list to be utterly terrible (and yet everyone else seemed to rave about it... I couldn't get on with it.)

This book is brilliant though. So many example questions and it covers a broad range of topics, it has helped me well into my second year too.

You would do well to cover A level maths too though. I used these as revision for A level and if you can get hold of them they're really good.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Core-Mathema...133688&sr=1-13

If not, any of these (C1-C4, M1/S1/D1 and beyond... they have further maths books too) are also useful, we used these as part of our A level courses.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Edexcel-AS-L...133723&sr=1-14

If you look around there may be online copies of these but I'm not sure. Or they might have them in a local library, possibly?