PREREQUISITES FOR PHYSICS 105

Officially, both MATH 120 and MATH 121 are prerequisites for PHYS 105.
All three of these courses are at a high school level, and many students will be substantially beyond some or all of them when they enter Seattle University.
The physics department and faculty are sympathetic to those students who need to begin the PHYS 105 sequence in order to graduate on time, but they also believe that students are ill-served if they enter PHYS 105 without MATH 121 and then do poorly because trigonometry is used from the beginning of the PHYS 105 course.
Most of the PHYS 105 students are pre-med biology or general science majors, so the course is very competitive.
Any SPEX student without adequate math background would be at a disadvantage.

Placement Test

Students who do not have MATH 121 should take the trig part of the Math Placement Exam (students need to contact the math department).
With a score of 4 or higher on the trig portion, students will be allowed to take PHYS 105 without MATH 121. If they don’t score at least 4 (perhaps after taking the exam twice) then they should take MATH 121 before taking PHYS 105. Trig courses are commonly offered during summers at community colleges. 

Simultaneous Enrollment in MATH 121 and PHYS 105

SPEX students must take the Math Placement Exam trig section and score at least 2 correct on that trig section in order to take Math 121 and Physics 105 simultaneously.