 |
Copyright © 1998 Wolfgang Christian. All rights reserved. |
|
Dr. Wolfgang Christian
Office: Dana 113
Phone: 892-2322
Text: Physics (5th edition) by Douglas C. Giancoli
Lecture: MWF 9:30-10:20 (Required)
Lab: MW 1:30-4:30 (Required)
Office Hours: MWF 10:30-11:30 TTh 10-12 and by appointment. (You can usually
find me in the Dana building from 8:00 to 5:00.)
Help sessions: Students sometimes request that I have informal (and
optional) evening help sessions. No new material is covered. I rely on
students to guide the discussion of topics. These sessions are most popular before a
major review but they can be scheduled whenever there is sufficient interest.
COURSE OBJECTIVES:
The successful student will obtain an understanding of and an appreciation for mechanics, waves, kinetic theory, and thermodynamics. Topics covered will include:
Even though much of the material we will be studying was developed in the 17th and 18th centuries, it is not without current interest. Much of our technological society is build upon its foundations. Furthermore, the computer has revitalized classical physics through the study of such topics as chaos and multiple particle systems. In fact, the computer has now made it possible to begin the study of systems that were heretofore treated in junior/senior level courses or are impossible to solve! Computers will be used to simulate these systems in class and as part of the weekly laboratory.
STRUCTURE OF THE COURSE:
Class periods will be a mixture of theory, analysis, demonstration, computer simulation, and discussion. We believe in the active-learner approach. You are required to read. Your English professor will not recite every stanza of Shakespeare and it is a waste of our time and your parents money for me to recite Giancoli.
Homework:You will be assigned homework problems together with due dates. I encourage you to use as many resources as possible to complete these exercises including: books in the library, other classmates, and me. There is, however, a distinction between collaboration and copying (plagiarism). A student should be able to work each problem independently. Conversations among students for the purpose of understanding concepts is encouraged; however, the final analysis and write-up must be your own work. Copying another student's data or analysis from this class or any previous class is a violation of the honor code. Since homework is graded, I will require that you specify where you received help and how much. Indicate if a tutor or classmate helped you with a homework problem by writing "Jane Doe showed me how to set up the free body diagram" or something similar next to the problem. Annotating your homework will keep you honest and will let me know if there are topics I need to review in class. I will not collect every homework assignment; I may give an occasional writ similar to the problems that were assigned.
Laboratory: Laboratory sessions will usually be preceded with a lecture explaining specific procedures to be followed. Laboratory exercises are designed to complement the theory presented in class and as such are often a compromise between the abstract world of point masses, frictionless tables and massless strings usually assumed and the real world. Hopefully, the labs you will perform will "work" and give results in good agreement with the ideal. We are trying to reinforce the abstract concepts of force, velocity, vectors, etc. with some real everyday phenomena in order to make the physics meaningful. That is the "cookbook" part of any laboratory--I know what the answer should be and I expect you to get reasonably close to it. Often you will discover enough disagreement that you can make some intelligent observations as to the cause of the discrepancy; this is where you can and should add your ideas as to what caused the discrepancy, how you would improve the experiment, or how you would modify the theory to give better agreement. These extras, together with how well the notebook is laid out, how carefully you have made equipment sketches, and how clearly you have explained the procedure are not "cookbook," will vary from individual to individual, and will distinguish the good experimentalist.
Computers: During the first few weeks of Py 120 you will be given instruction in the use of the computer for the analysis and acquisition of data. Computers have been added to the physics laboratory curriculum since they allow the rapid analysis of more data than was possible previously. Computers can help reduce the time and tedium of such routine tasks as tabulating and graphing. More importantly, computers have become a part of professional practice in the sciences and you need to be exposed to their use. There are pitfalls however that will need to be overcome; lost data due to scratched disks, bugs in programs or programmers, and a general computer-phobia among the uninitiated. With proper and careful operating procedures, a little work and understanding, and some occasional humor, these problems should go away. A general understanding of computers is helpful in many courses on campus; so you may wish to enroll in a CSC introductory short course if you don't know what a disk drive is, how to copy a file, or do other basic operations.
Just-In-Time (JIT): For most classes and laboratories the theory will have already been covered in class. But not always. You may be assigned a short JIT exercise to prepare you for what will be covered in the next class. These short exercises may reinforce old material or they may require you to study new material. They must be completed before you come to class or to the laboratory. They are usually due TWO HOURS before the beginning of the class. (All pre-laboratory exercises are JIT exercises.) Strict adherence to this rule is necessary for us to have time to review your work before class starts.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS:
Attendance: You are required to attend all lectures and laboratory sessions. Please see me if you have an extended illness or family emergency. You must initial the attendance sheet on the side blackboard every day so that I have a quick check of who is missing.
World Wide Web: You are required to access the Internet in order to retrieve information and complete interactive exercises.
Notebook: You are required to keep a laboratory notebook in which you record your day to day work. The lab notebook shall consist of entries made during each lab period. It should document the particular lab and contain analysis, diagrams, plots, and notes. The greater the amount of purposeful explanation, the higher the grade.
Grade: The final grade will be based on the traditional 100 point scale. It will be comprised of the following contributions:
|
Copyright © 1998 Wolfgang Christian. All rights reserved. |
|