If you are looking for easy courses in physics during your undergraduate experience, look no further. If physics isn’t your major, I still highly recommend them anyway. Physics is awesome. While you may have heard that these courses require no math, let’s be realistic. Expect some. The following courses are easy and can boost your grade average if you show up and put in the work. Here are a few recommendations based on student experiences.
1) PHY 100 “The Magic of Physics”
With such a cute title for this course, you would be correct to assume that this course broadly introduces the topics of Classical and Modern Physics, from planetary motion to matter waves, and does not require you to be a scientist or mathematician. The course is structured as two weekly lectures with one weekly tutorial per week. This course will count towards the Science Distribution Requirement and is primarily aimed at students in the Humanities. The final exam allows for a few “open book pages” that you can take along with you.
2) PHY 207 “The Physics of Music”
This course is online and provides nonscience students with information on the science of music, such as perception, oscillations, scales, instruments, recording, and producing music digitally. Lectures are all online, and tutorials will require online web attendance and participation, while the final exam will be in person. If you have prior background in a musical instrument, you will likely do very well in this course. Be prepared for weekly quizzes and an assignment (this may have changed by now though so always check the syllabus).
3) AST 101 “The Sun and Its Neighbours”
This is an astronomy course. It is easiest to handle in your first or second year of undergraduate study. In terms of the amount of course work, which you may not want to do in your upper years. You have to purchase the iClicker and textbook (unless you can buy the textbook at a reduced price from somebody who took the course). While the topic may be interesting to most people, please note that you will need to dedicate some time outside of the classroom for observatory visits (telescope projects). The midterm, and exam, require a lot of memorization but the content is very easy to comprehend. So it is easy in that sense but requires a lot of your time, so include that in your decision.
Always keep in mind that the professor who is teaching the course during the fall/winter may differ from the professor who is teaching the course in the summer. So they may or may not run the course differently in terms of strictness. Best of luck in choosing your courses. Visit https://www.physics.utoronto.ca/students/undergraduate-courses for more information.
