Winter
2006
Instructor:
Aurel Bulgac
E-mail:
bulgac@phys.washington.edu
Class:
MTuThF, 1:30-2:20 pm, PAA A102
Office:
PAB B478
Phone:
(206)685-2988
Office
Hours: Th 2:30-3:20 pm, PAA Study
Center AM018 and by appointment.
TA:
Brandon Lee Wall
Office hours:
9:00 am - 12:00 pm, in PAA Study Center, AM018 and
by appointment
Course web page: http://faculty.washington.edu/bulgac/114W06/index.html
Lab, Phys 117
information
Epost for Phys 114, Winter 2006
Use Epost to start a discussion group, find buddies to study
with,
etc. I shall only ocasionally check this discussion board.
Send
an anonymous message to the instructor
Unless you sign the message, there is no way for me to know who
sent
the message or the sender's email.
The best thing is to use the link above to my e-mail if you want
me to know who you are, as then your e-mail
address will show up. Several times I tried to to reply to anonymous
e-mails, in which the author sent me an
e-mail address and he/she expected an answer, but the e-mail address
supplied was wrong.
Textbook: James
S. Walker, Physics, Prentice Hall
The material in Chapter 1 will not be
discussed in class, but you will be expected to review it yourself. I
suggest that you do that a few times during the quarter, as your
perspective on various topics will evolve in time and so will your
understanding of the material presented in this chapter. In each
chapter I suggest that you solve at least 20-25 problems. Since answers
are provided only for odd-numbered problems, I suggest that you solve a
subset of these problems. For example you may choose to solve the
problems 1, 5, 9, ... 99, 103 in chapter 2 and the problems
1, 3, 5, ... 53, 55 in chapter 3, and so forth. It is important that
you solve problems relevant to all sections of a given chapter.<>
Homework assigment:
Homework is not required, but it is strongly
advised
that you do it. One cannot
master the material unless one is able to solve
correctly problems. As a matter
of fact this is how you are going to be tested
in exams, by solving problems
and providing exact numerical answers. Unless you
practice by solving problems
the most likely outcome of the exams will be
failure.
As you already know, unlike
many other fields of human inquiry, physics
is an exact science.
You must have a computer account for email and work. Your homework will be done on the web using a system called Tycho, developed at the University of Illinois. This system is still under development and so far it has been greatly appreciated by the students using it. There are essentially two things we will use: homework and gradebook.
In the homework portion, every week several
problems
will be posted for you to
solve. As you will discover immediately, there are
two types of problems:
a) Standard Homework Problems have a numerical
answer.
You will get
immediate feedback as to whether the answer supplied
is correct or not. In many
problems, you can ask for pre-programmed help. Full
credit is given (if done
before the deadline) for the correct answer,
independent
of how many submissions
were needed to obtain it. b) Interactive Examples
are often somewhat more
difficult problems.
Help in these problems usually
comes in the form of more questions. The hope of the
writers is that solution of
these problems will lead to better conceptual
understanding
rather than just
equation manipulation.
Since some problems unfortunately still have bugs, you might run into the unpleasant situation that you have the correct solution but the computer will not budge and will not accept it. If you are 200 % confident that your solution is correct, send me a detailed e-mail, containing the name of the problem, your numerical input (NB these numbers differ from student to student), describe your approach and write your answers. The first five students who run into such difficulties and send me a correct solution will have their score to that particular problem raised by 50%. Those points will be added to your final homework grade at the end of the course.
Click on the link http://tychosrv.phys.washington.edu/courses/phys114/winter06/
to login to the Tycho sytem and do your graded
homework.
Follow the
instructions on the login page. Your homework, exam
and final grades will be
posted using the Tycho system as well. The sudent
database is updated daily
during the first week of the quarter daily and every
two days during the second week. If you
experience difficulties logign into the
Tycho system please write to
Laura Clement lclement@u.washington.edu.
Exams: EXAMS MAY NOT BE TAKEN LATE
THERE WILL BE NO MAKEUPS. If for some reason you miss one of the midterms, the one you missed will be your low grade. Please arrange your vacation schedule so you take the final exam at the proper time.
There will be three one-hour mid-term exams and one final exam. Each hourly exam (from 1:30 pm to 2:20 pm sharp) will consist of multiple-choice questions and these will be machine graded. No partial credit will be given. The exams are closed book, but you will be permitted to have one 8 1/2" x 11" sheet of hand written notes to aid you, no xerox copies or any other copies of any kind. In addition you will only be allowed to have a calculator, an eraser, a #2 pencil and a pen. Scratch paper will be provided. Do not forget to bring a bubble sheet (Standard Answer Sheet). You can get them at the Hub, By George and other places around the campus.
The final exam will cover
all
the material studied during the quarter. The
problems on the exams will be
chosen from the Tycho homework, the end of the
chapter problems, or they will
be problems created specifically for the exam, but similar to Tycho or
textbook problems. On each hourly exam there will
be approximately 10-12
multiple-choice
problems and approximately 20-24 problems on the final exam. You will
be expected to solve
numerically each problem and
choose the correct answer among the 4-5 alternatives
suggested. On a typical
exam the average student will provide correct answers
to about 5-7 problems, with
a standard deviation of approximately 2.
Cheating will be dealt with
harshly.
Grading:
Grading will be done on a curve, with the class average being about 2.7. This will vary depending on the performance of the class as a whole. Approximately 10-15 % of the class will receive 4.0, and 0.7 will be the lowest passing grade.
Each hourly exam will count for 25 % of the grade, while the final two-hour exam will count as two one-hour exams for 25 % of the grade. Thus there will be five exam grades, with the final exam grade being counted twice. Your score on each exam will be normalized so that each exam, regardless of the number of questions or the difficulty of the exam, will count the same. This score for each exam will be converted to an exam grade point (2.3, 3.2, etc.). The approximate (it can change slightly!) formula which will be used to compute each grade for each exam is
Your Grade = (Your exam score - Average exam score)/Standard Deviation + 2.7
At the end of the quarter, your lowest examgrade will be dropped and your course grade will be the average of the remaining four examgrades and, if that is the case the extra credit for the homework. The graded homework on Tycho is not required for the grade. However, if you have worked out the assigned problems and obtained the correct answers before the posted deadline you can received up to 0.3 point towards your final grade (on top of the grade based on exam results). 0.3 will be awarded for 100% correct answers.
The instructor reserves the
right
to modify this grading procedure in any way as long
as no student receives a
course
grade lower than one calculated by the method
described above.
General remarks
All the mathematics you need to know to be able to take this course is summarized in Appendix A of the textbook. Please review various number notations, solving linear and quadratic algebraic equations and systems of 2-3 linear equations with respectively 2-3 unknowns, plane geometry, areas and volumes and basic trigonometry.
This physics course provides the basis for all
applications
of physics, and
future physics, biophysics, and chemical physics
courses
or topics you may
have to or be willing to explore. The subject matter
of PHYS 114 is mechanics,
which according to the dictionary means [the]
science
that deals with energy
and forces and their effect on bodies. This
definition
actually covers just about
all of physics! But don't worry, here we will focus
on what we can learn about
the motion of ordinary-sized objects (for example,
bigger than a molecule but
smaller than a galaxy) moving at speeds much less
than the speed of light.
Objects outside these limits require quantum
mechanics
and relativity, which
you will hear about if and when you take PHYS 116.
Specifically, we are going to learn about Newtonian mechanics, which as every schoolchild knows, relates the falling of an apple to the motion of a planet in its orbit. Isaac Newton's triumph in bringing the heavens down to earth came when he was 24 years old, and he had to invent calculus to finish the job. Our task will be much easier! We will scrupulously avoid any whiff of math beyond the high school level, although by the time we are finished you should be able to understand what calculus is all about and appreciate its power.
Most 114 students are not planning to major in a
mathematical
science like
physics or chemistry, or an engineering field. But
whether your interests are in
the life sciences, social sciences, arts, or
humanities,
the content of PHYS 114
is fundamental for scientific literacy, a commodity
which seems to be getting
in shorter supply even as our world gets more and
more technological.
In class, you will learn a few facts about
mechanics,
and how to make a few
calculations that someday might be handy contesting
a speeding ticket, but
mostly we will focus on the process of thinking used
in science. Sometimes
this is called the scientific method. Really, it is
an approach to analyzing
information that has been found to be astonishingly
successful - so much so,
that it took us from Newton's world of
witch-burnings
and horse-drawn
transportation to our world of instant
communications
and jet aircraft in
only 300 years. It provides a way to distinguish
what
is probably right from
what is probably wrong, in an agreed-upon manner.
Unfortunately it is not
universally agreed-upon, even yet - witch hunts
still
go on... Above
all,
science
is about clear and unambiguous communication of ideas.
Please feel free to ask questions in class, to
ask
for a revision of some
material "in different words," and to use the office
hours for a "smaller group"
discussion of particular topics and try also Epost
as well. It is very important
that you keep up your reading and advance through
the homework problems
as the course progresses. It is almost impossible
to get a good grade without
working a fair number of homework problems.
The Physics Department runs a Study Center where
assistance
with course
work is available for many hours Monday through
Friday.
There are a number
of computers in this room as well where you can
access
the Internet. The
Study Center is located in this building,
downstairs
from the Foucault pendulum.
In the Study Center there are tables assigned to
different
courses. Depending
on the time of the day, there may be one, two, or
three Teaching Assistants
working through the tables answering
questions.
At some times there will be
additional faculty assistance. Some students have found it useful to form
"groups" who work
homework together.
NB Some of the material here has been borrowed
from
my colleagues' webpages.
Tentative Syllabus
| Dates | Topics | Chapter |
| January 3-6 | 1D Kinematics, Vectors | Ch. 2, 3 |
| January 9-13 |
Vectors, 2D Kinematics |
Ch. 3, 4 |
| January 16 Holiday | Martin Luther King Day | |
| January 17-20 |
Newton's Laws |
Ch. 5 |
| January
20, Friday |
|
Chapters 2-4 |
| January 23-27 | Applications of Newton's Laws |
Ch. 6 |
| January 30 - February 3 |
Work and Kinetic Energy |
Ch. 7 |
| February 6-10 |
Potential Energy |
Ch. 8 |
| February 13-16 |
Linear Momentum |
Ch. 9 |
| February 17, Friday |
|
Chapters 5-8 |
| February 20 Holiday | Presidents Day | |
| February 21-24 |
Rotational Kinematics |
Ch. 10 |
| February 27-March 2 |
Rotational Dynamics |
Ch. 11 |
| March
3, Friday |
|
Chapters 8
- 10 |
| March 6-10 |
Gravity | Ch. 12 |
| Monday, March 13 2:30- 4:20 pm |
|
Everything !
|
