12/20
Final exams are available from Laura Clement (address below).
Requests for regrades of parts of the final will be accepted
up until Wednesday, January 4th, 2006. Please follow the usual procedure
of attaching a note describing the grading or addition error you
think has occured.
12/20
Links to solutions removed today.
12/14
Have a good break! For those taking 122A next quarter, the
web site is up, with the syllabus available.
If you wish to talk with an academic
counselor
about becoming
a physics major or minor, or have general questions about the physics
program, please contact Margot Nims
[margot@phys.washington.edu,
C139 PAB, 543-2772].
Office Hours: provisionally
Tuesdays 11-12 (my office) and Wednesdays 11:30-12:20 (study center).
Additional hours prior to exams will be announced
in class and on this page.
Tutorials (Please note that attendance is mandatory):
Knight, "Physics for Scientists and Engineers", 1st edition.
Note that there is an auxiliary web based system called
"Mastering Physics" ,
which I will not be using for the class, but which you may find
helpful for additional problems. The Course ID is
SHARPEphys121Aaut05.
McDermott and Shaffer, "Tutorials in Introductory Physics".
Welcome to PHYS 121, the first of a three-quarter sequence of introductory
physics courses for physics and engineering majors. You should find this
course challenging and stimulating.
I hope that you also find it to be interesting and enjoyable.
Have a great quarter!
The course design is a cooperative effort of many faculty.
Each element of the course (lecture, lab and tutorial)
is important for your mastery of physics. The three elements are
coordinated, but are not necessarily synchronized. Research has shown
that presenting material in cycles, so that the same topic is approached
more than once from different viewpoints, is a very effective means of
encouraging deeper understanding and long-term retention of ideas.
One feature of the class that may be unusual to you is the use
of clickers (infrared responders) to get feedback in class.
This is by now fairly standard in the physics 12X sequence,
but new to me, so there may be some teething problems.
The aim is to make lectures more interactive, and thus useful.
Each quarter, the UW Office of Educational Assessment conducts
surveys
of undergraduate courses. For many years, the PHYS121-2-3 courses have
been among the courses reportedly requiring the most hours of work per
week outside of class. The typical range is
from 5--20 hours of study per week outside of class.
This is a challenging class!
Note that MATH124 (Calculus I)
is a prerequisite/corequisite for this class.
Please be aware that many technical majors have a minimum grade
requirement
for
a core of lower-division technical classes including the PHYS121-2-3
sequence.
Therefore, each student is strongly urged to discuss
departmental
entry requirements with their undergraduate or departmental advisors,
and
plan their course loads accordingly.
Memorization of material is not particularly helpful in
this class. Your goal in this class should be to understand how each
new topic is related to all of the previous material, and how the
concepts, rules and formulae can be applied to solve real-world
problems. Never let anything go by if you do not
understand. Generally, ask questions immediately. If it is
inconvenient to interrupt, make a quick note to yourself and inquire
later.
Students are encouraged to
gather and work cooperatively in small groups in
the Physics Study Center, located in Room AM018
(go down the stairs that circle behind the Foucault pendulum
and proceed toward the end of the hall).
Teaching assistants will be
available for consultation during many portions of the day if your
study group needs assistance, but staffing levels will not support
much individual attention.
It is staffed from
approximately 9:30am-4:30pm on weekdays.
Weekly short
pretests
will be administered on the
web. These are intended to start you thinking
about concepts that will be addressed in the tutorial
later in the week. Pretest questions will be posted
in the tutorial room. Completion of pretests will
be a factor in determining your course grade.
Problems using the computer-based
Tycho
system. The Tycho web page provides instructions as to how to log in.
Homework must be submitted over the web.
Deadlines will be announced with each assignment; the
typical due date will be 9:20am Wednesday
the week after it the assignment is announced,
with a second deadline (for 70% credit) at 9:20am Friday.
See
here for more information on using Tycho.
Tutorial
homework
will be assigned and collected in tutorial sections.
Grading policies will be explained in your tutorial section.
There will be three 50 minute midterms (during class time on
Fridays Oct 14, Nov 4, and Dec 2)
and a two-hour final exam (Wednesday, Dec 14, 830-1020).
All will take place in the lecture room, A102.
Each exam will consist of various types of problems:
some similar to the Tycho homework,
others based on material discussed in the tutorials and similar
to the tutorial worksheets and homework,
and others related to laboratory experiments.
There will be a roughly equal mix of multiple choice and standard
questions.
The one-hour exams will emphasize the material covered
in the prior two or three weeks,
but may include earlier topics too.
The final exam will be comprehensive.
The standard cover sheet for exams is
here
.
All exams will be CLOSED BOOK with one 8.5"x11"
single-sided sheet of notes allowed---four such sheets for the final.
Calculators are allowed and recommended.
Cell phones, radios, etc. are not permitted. Laptop
computers are not permitted, and the use of the text-storage
capability now available on many calculators is not permitted. Exams
are to be your own work; you are not permitted to collaborate with any
other person. The Physics department reserves the right to ask for
valid identification from any student during examinations. You must
bring a bubble sheet.
If you think there is an error in the grading of
an exam, or in the adding up of points, you
may return your exam for regrading.
To do so, you must resubmit the exam no later than
the lecture following the one in which
the exams were returned. Attach a brief note to the
exam (preferably using the
regrade
form )
explaining the possible mistake(s). Do NOT
make any marks or changes on the original exam.
Please note that portions of each exam are
photocopied, and that a regrade request may trigger
a regrading of other parts of the exam as well,
so that it is possible that your total score may
decrease.
Note that there will be no make-up exams.
Students with
outside professional, service, or career commitments (i.e. military
service,
ROTC, professional conference presentation, NCAA sports, etc.)
conflicting
exactly with the exam dates must contact the intructor early in the
quarter to establish alternate examination procedures. Students who
miss an exam without making prior arrangements with the lecture
instructor
will drop that exam score. Except for extreme circumstances, a final
grade
of 0.0 will be assigned to any student who misses two midterm exams.
Solutions will be posted after the exams, along with
exam statistics.
Concurrent enrollment in PHYS121 lecture, tutorial and lab is
mandatory; students
will receive a combined grade for lecture, tutorial and lab. The final
course grade is based on the best two of three midterms, the final
exam,
the Tycho lecture HW, tutorial participation and HW,
lab participation and reports, and
lecture exercises (using the infrared response system).
A summary of the grading policy for the 12X sequence
may be found
here.
In addition, a grade of 0.0 will normally be given to students
who do not take the final or who miss two midterms.
After the raw grade has been determined following the above-mentioned
policy, I will adjust the grade based on records from the lecture response
system. After a ``break-in'' period (the first two lectures), from which responses
will not be counted, each response you give will count for one point,
with an additional point if you get the correct answer. These points will
be tallied at the end of the quarter, and will be used to adjust
your grade upwards or downwards by a maximum of
0.1 grade points. Students obtaining 75% or more of the maximum
possible points will receive the maximum upwards shift. This allows
you to miss a few lectures, or have your battery go dead, and yet
still attain the maximum "clicker" score.
To receive this adjustment you must have registered your clicker
at some point during the quarter (see above).