Lecture: Room 2153; 1200, 1300 MWF
Office Hours: 1100 M, 1400 W F
Labs: Room 2409; 1500 W, 0800 R, 1300 R, 1600 R
Dr Doug Davis, Room 2135, 581-4753,
PHYsics 1150 (PHY 1151/1152) is the first semester of a two-semester sequence of algebra-based Introductory Physics esp'ly for students majoring in Geology, Industrial Technology, and Health-related fields (preMed, preVet, preOptometry, etc). PHY 1150 covers Mechanics -- motion, both its description (kinematics) and its cause (dynamics), conservation ideas (energy, momentum, and angular momentum), simple harmonic motion, circular motion, gravity -- Heat and Thermodynamics, Periodic Motion, and Waves and Sound. PHY 1160 covers Electricity and Magnetism, Optics, and Modern Physics -- Special Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Atomic and Nuclear Physics. PHYsics 1350, 1360, and 1370 cover these topics in greater detail and are calculus-based. PHYsics 3050G is a quick one-semester overview of Introductory Physics. PHYsics 1051C is a quick one-semester overview of Modern Physics.
In the past Physics was known as "Natural Philosophy". I like the implication of that name; Physics is understanding the natural world around us. Physics involves understanding, not memorizing. Spend your time and effort understanding the ideas and the equations will (almost) take care of themselves. Equations are tools or summaries; they are not ends in themselves!
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We will use College Physics, published by Saunders College Publishing Co; it is the paperbacked book you should have received from the Textbook Rental System. Saving a textbook as a last resort before an exam or before looking at homework problems makes the course more difficult than it needs to be. Make life easy for yourself; read the textbook. Take a few class notes over this familiar material. Work all the assigned problems -- and a few more. Then relax for the exams will be easy. |
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Physics labs are quite different from, say, chemistry labs. While care must be taken in making measurements, finding the value of an unknown to a tenth of a percent is not the main reason for doing a Physics lab. The labs are designed to go along with the lecture and the textbook and to demonstrate principles discussed there. Again, understanding is the key idea. Think of why you are doing various steps in the lab. Never just blindly follow the procedure. Understand why you are doing something or what it will tell you.
Each lab report should include the following:
Title: Don't call it "Lab number three"!
Purpose: Why are you doing this lab? What do you expect to show, use, or demonstrate?
Procedure: What equipment did you use? What did you do? Illustrations may be appropriate here.
Data: Probably a data table and a graph.
Data Analysis: If there is a straight line on a graph, find its slope! What did you expect the slope to be? How close was it? That is, find the percent difference. What equation corresponds to your graph?
Conclusion: What does it all mean? What ideas did you show, use, or demonstrate? Unacceptable conclusions include "this lab helped my understanding", "we got very good results", "this lab worked out very well". What did the lab mean? There should be some strong connection between your Purpose and your Conclusion.
Only a single lab report from the lab team (of two lab partners) is required. Lab reports should be printed from the computers in the lab. Lab reports are due at the end of the lab period. I will return them to you promptly and may ask you to RESUBMIT them. Resubmissions are due the following lab period. Be sure to keep a copy of your lab report on your disk. A separate disk for each member of the lab team is wise. No doubt your lab parter -- not you -- will loose your initial lab report on his/her disk just when you need to change the conclusion and resubmit the lab report. Keep a copy of your lab report on your own disk. Lab reports are graded as satisfactory or resubmit. Lab reports will not be accepted late. If you are run over by a Mack truck and are in the Emergency Room during the scheduled lab period, please have the ER physician give me a call immediately. If the equipment has not been put away, the lab can be made up the following day under such dire and unusual circumstance. Ordinarily, however, labs may not be made up later.
Homework is vital in Physics!!!! I can not stress that too much. Physics is like SCUBA diving--it requires participation and practice and learning from your own errors. You may be able to understand the Civil War by listening to lectures. But you can not successfully learn to SCUBA dive only by listening to lectures--you have to get wet! Physics, too, requires that you "get wet", that you get your hands messy in the mire of homework problems and laboratory work. There simply is no other way to learn Physics. Most of the exams will not be strikingly different from the homework. Diligence with the homework will make the exams easy but ignoring the homework will make the exams impossible! Struggling with and learning from doing the homework is vital! You must do the homework&emdash;just to survive. Solutions will be posted on the world wide web. Do not look at the solutions until after you have worked the problems yourself. Homework will not be turned in and graded; this requires great maturity and responsibility on your part.
Your grade for this course will be determined by the following:
Hour exams - 3 of 4 @ 100 pts 300 pts Weekly bulletin board postings 100 Final exam (comprehensive, of course) 200 Total 600 pts
In my opinion, there are two objective methods of grading.
One can determine grades strictly by a predetermined number (e. g.,
100 - 91, A 90 - 81, B 80 - 71, C 70 - 61, D etc.) |
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(e. g., 15% will get A's; 20%, B's; 30%, C's; 20%, D's; and 15%, F's).
The first method requires that the instructor be able to write perfect exams. The second requires a perfect distribution of students. I have never found either condition met. Therefore, my grading "system" is some mixture of the two. You may consider the above grading scale a sort of "guaranteed minimum". An 82 will be a B. But a 79 -- or even a 78 -- may also be a B. That is, I will not raise letter grade requirements but I do reserve the right to lower them.
Bulletin Board: Every week you must post one item on this course's bulletin board. You may post a question or post a reply to someone else's question. I think this interaction -- this exchange of information -- is important. I will try to refrain from answering questions immediately to give you a chance to think about the question and offer an answer. There will be four "forums" or general divisions. For credit, you must post an item in the "current" forum -- before its associated hour exam. You are certainly welcome to go back to older forums -- or look ahead at future ones -- but "points" or "credit" for the 100 points in your total grade require you to post an item for the "current" forum. About every other week, I will post my records outside my office door. Please check this posting for I expect keeping track of these postings to be a nightmare for me. Please help keep me up to date with these! The first deadline is noon on Friday, January 28. After that, each week's deadline is noon on Friday. Please do not wait until late Friday morning to make a posting.
THE MECHANICAL UNIVERSE (TMU) video tapes are available in the Self-Study Materials Center (SSMC). I would like to show several TMU tapes in class. Other pressures of the course may prevent this. These are excellent tapes made a few years ago at CalTech and include short historical sketches, wonderful computer animation, and scenes that may be difficult or impossible to duplicate in the classroom. While they were made for a PBS audience they also include extensive examples of calculus. The video tapes are outstanding. Please don't worry about the calculus!
Homework solutions, the course schedule, class lecture notes, and class hand-outs are posted on the Internet or the World Wide Web. We will discuss the Internet the first week of class. You can link to the PHY 1150 material from my home page. Add a BOOKMARK for this page or the CALENDAR page for this course; that will make it far easier to find and use this web site.
COPYING someone else's ideas or creative talents is called plagiarism. Presidential candidates have had careers ruined because of plagiarism. Pulitzer prizes have been taken back because of plagiarism. Students have been expelled because of plagiarism. Unauthorized copying of computer programs is also called theft. We have licenses for all the software you will encounter in this course. University policy is that you should not illegally copy computer software. I expect you to abide by that.
(C) 2000, Doug Davis; all rights reserved
