The following is a brief collection of possible study strategies for the Physics 53 final exam. These are strictly optional; feel free to use any study strategy you like. Bear in mind that you should balance your preparation for the Physics 53 final with your preparations for your other finals. Limit your physics study (for better or worse) to what you can afford, probably no more than 2-4 hours a day (the latter only if broken up into a couple of sessions). This should be plenty of time, provided you've worked diligently on the material for the entire semester.
When confronted with the need to prepare for the Physics 53 final, it is easy to panic. Don't panic, just relax. Sure, we covered a lot of material. On the other hand, you could easily fit all the equations you have to ``memorize'' onto a couple of sheets of paper without writing particularly small, especially if you don't just memorize them but rather learn them. Many of the relations you might be tempted to memorize can easily be derived in a few steps from a relatively small set of starting equations, and understanding how to go about this is a major part of understanding or learning the material.
I personally don't remember off the top of my head any of the details of any particular solution to (e.g.) an inclined plane problem or gravity problem or wave problem. What I remember instead are Newton's Law(s) and how to solve constant acceleration problems in general, Newton's Law of Gravitation and its potential energy equivalent (and the various kinematical relations like the definition of kinetic energy, angular momentum and what have you) and the general form(s) of solutions to the wave equation. For a specific problem, I then take these relatively simple equations, relations, and rules and fit them to the physics of the problem, and then systematically (algebraically) solve for the unknown requested. If I had to (or tried to) remember all the equations in the book, I'd go nuts too.
That is why I emphasize (again) that the ``right'' way to study for the test is not by memorizing formulae; it is by solving and re-solving your webassign, homework, quiz, and exam problems until you can do them all perfectly. The webassign and homework problems will generally teach you what you need to memorize in terms of starting points even as they help you gut-level learn what those starting points mean in terms of pushes and pulls and masses, which (after all) is mostly what this semester has been all about. Most of the problems we solve come down to figuring out what pushes on what, how things respond to the pushes, and using your intuition to guide the algebra from a few simple starting points.
Consider rereading the online notes and the text (very quickly, of course)- frequently it contains insight and understanding is more important than memorization, especially for answering the ``concept'' multiple choice or T/F questions. If there are any points that still confuse you about the right answer to a concept-type question, go to the review session(s) and ask questions until you are Enlightened.
After a while, though, one can get to the point where just going over problems one has already seen ceases to be of benefit. One needs new problems ``like'' the previously assigned problems to work with to see if one has learned what is needed to solve them. A large collection of problems follows these study suggestions. Feel free to use them working alone or in groups to test your knowledge and understanding of the core material covered in this course. It is impossible to guarantee that this collection contains all of the possible kinds of problems you might see on the final, but most of the possible kinds are probably represented by one or more examples in this collection.
With that said, here are some specific study hints and suggestions.