Physics 6B Introduction to Physics II Winter 2003

General Information

Discussion sections, led by teaching assistant and physics graduate student Daniel Simon:

• 7:30 to 9:00 pm, Tuesday, Thimann 185
• 7:00 to 8:30 pm, Wednesday, Thimann 185

Attendance of at least one of the discussion sections is recommended but not mandatory. They will concentrate on problem solving and could be useful to you when working homework problems and preparing for the exams. Daniel should not actually work your homework out for you, but similar examples can be worked out in the section, hints can be supplied, questions answered, and so forth.

Textbook: University Physics, Young and Freedman, 10th Edition, Volumes 1 and 2, available at the Bay Tree Book Store. Physics 6B Lab Manual, also available at the Bay Tree Bookstore.

Web page and Electronic Reserves: I will maintain a web page for this course at http://scipp.ucsc.edu/~johnson/phys6b/phys6b.html. This site includes course information, syllabus, information on the TAs, the homework assignments in PDF format, PDF copies of the exams, copies of many of the slides that I will use in the lectures, and a link to the library electronic reserves (ERES). The password for ERES is “young”. There you will be able to find the solutions to the homework and exams.

Labs: The lab course Physics 6M must be taken along with this lecture course. There will be seven weeks of lab. See my syllabus for the schedule. At least six of the seven labs must be attended and completed for a passing grade in the lab course. That does not mean than one of the labs is optional—missing one lab will reflect in your evaluation or grade. If an emergency or illness causes you to miss a lab, then you should contact your TA and try to arrange to attend another lab session the same week, with the permission of the other TA. Making up a lab during one of the following weeks will be next to impossible.

Please come to the first lab prepared with the lab manual and a new lab notebook in which to do your work. The lab notebook should be bound, 10” by 7 7/8”, and “quad” ruled (pages look like graph paper). Such notebooks are available in the bookstore with a black-and-white marbled cover and about 80 pages. Your notebook will remain in the laboratory throughout the quarter—the lab work, including write-up, must be completed in the three-hour session.

Each lab has associated with it a one-page “prelab,” which is a set of questions to be answered by you before coming to the lab. They are designed to encourage you to come to the lab session prepared, so they will be collected by the TA upon your arrival and graded. The questions are included in the manual.

Homework: An assignment will be passed out each week and will be due the following Friday at the beginning of class (except for the last assignment, #9, which will not be collected and graded). The assignments can also be found on the course web page. All students will be expected to complete all of the assignments. The homework should be the most important part of your learning experience in physics. You will learn and retain very little from the lectures and reading assignments if you do not take the effort to solve problems and answer questions. Furthermore, unless you already know the material, you will perform poorly on the exams if you do not make a serious effort on the homework.

If after struggling with a problem you cannot solve it, then be sure to seek help from a classmate, a teaching assistant, or myself. Students are allowed to work together on homework, but do not forget that you will be on your own during the examinations. If you get into a habit of letting your classmate or TA do the thinking for you, then you will have serious troubles with the exams. It is essential that you think hard about a problem, including drawing some diagrams and writing down what relations you can, before asking for assistance. That is the only way to improve your own problem solving abilities and the only way to ensure that the knowledge becomes firmly etched in your memory.

Each homework set will be graded and returned to you via the alphabetical cubbyholes inside Room 121 in the Thimann lab building (a sign on the door indicates that 6B homework is inside). The solutions will be put on reserve in the science library (hard copy and ERES), so be sure to look carefully at any problem that you worked incorrectly. Advanced undergraduates will grade most of the homework. The graduate teaching assistants and I will grade the exams. Errors in grading and recording scores do frequently occur. If you think that there was an error in the grading of your homework or exam, then do not hesitate to see me about it (unless the error is in your favor, of course). However, given the size of the class, I don’t want to be nit-picked about the grader’s judgement as to how much partial credit to assign to incorrectly worked homework problems. There will be many graders, so it is not unlikely that you and your friends will receive different scores for identically incorrect solutions. Each of your assignments should go to a different grader, so it should average out in the end, as far as homework is concerned. On the exams, a single person always grades a given problem for all students, in order to keep the grading consistent.

Lectures: I would like for you to make at least a first pass at each reading assignment, as listed in the syllabus, before coming to class. Due to the limited time, the lectures will not cover all of the material in the textbook. In fact, the lectures are intended to supplement the textbook, not substitute for it. In the lectures I will concentrate on improving your conceptual understanding of the principal topics of the course. I will also work on problem solving and calculational techniques as time allows, but I will rely upon the discussion sections to complete that job.

Lectures will consist of presentations of the principal topics, some example calculations, demonstrations using various pieces of laboratory apparatus, and occasional “active learning sessions” in which I pose a multiple-choice question on the overhead and request a response from the class, usually by a show of hands. Be aware that these questions often find their way into the exams.

I strongly encourage you to ask questions at any time during the lectures. Of course, I will always be happy to answer questions after the lecture and during office hours. However, it is frequently frustrating to be asked a question just after the lecture only to realize that I didn’t get something across completely or effectively during the lecture. It is too late then to rectify the problem for the class as a whole. For that reason, if something is not making sense, please speak up and ask your question during the lecture. Do not assume that you are the only one in the lecture hall who did not understand some point. Most likely there are 100 or more other students present who have the same question (whether they realize it or not).

Office Hours: All students are strongly encouraged to make good use of my office hours. I have set aside that time specifically to work with students. If nobody shows up, I will always find something else to work on. You must not feel that you are interrupting, however, if you come during my office hours and find me working. You have first priority during that time, and I will be happy to meet with you, help with homework problems, and discuss anything even remotely related to the course material.

As soon as the information is available, I will pass out a schedule of office hours for the teaching assistants, so please make good use of those opportunities as well. In fact, many students appear to be more comfortable going to the teaching assistants for help than to the professor. That may be understandable, but it is unfortunate for me. I encourage you to come, if possible, to my own office hours at least once during the quarter. Such interaction with students is important for me in order that I get a good sense of how well the course material is getting across and what problems the students are having.

If you find my door closed, please don’t hesitate to knock. I am usually also receptive to relatively quick questions outside of my office hours, although you may have to look around a little to find me. I am usually on campus Monday through Friday and can be found in my office or in the SCIPP laboratory and office area on the third floor of the Nat. Sci. II building. If there is a special and urgent need, then you can make an appointment to meet with me outside of my office hours. Please understand, however, that my time constraints cannot allow me to establish regular tutoring sessions with students outside of my scheduled office hours, especially with such a large class.

I am also readily available via e-mail. If you have specific questions that you can write down, then send them to me and I will try to respond as soon as possible.

Exams: Midterms: January 22 and February 21. Final: Thursday, March 20, 12:00 to 3:00 pm.

Part of each exam will consist of traditional problem solving, while the remainder will stress the concepts and relationships in more qualitative ways via short essay questions and multiple choice questions similar to those discussed during lectures.

Exams will be closed book, with no notes allowed. Calculators may or may not be allowed, depending on whether they will be needed—I’ll let you know. I will expect you to memorize some basic formulæ and definitions. However, I will provide with the exams a list of necessary physical constants, plus any formulæ that I do not expected you to memorize. I expect you to know by heart basic mathematical facts, such as the relationship between the area of a circle and its radius.

No makeup exams are scheduled. If you miss an exam due to an unavoidable catastrophe, then please come to see me about what to do, together with appropriate documentation of your excuse. Please do not ask to take the final exam early.

Evaluations: Grades and evaluations will be based on the homework and exam scores according to the following approximate weights:

· Homework: 20%.

· Midterm exams: 20% each.

· Final exam: 40%.

The significant weight put on the homework emphasizes the fact that completion of the homework is a mandatory part of this course.

Regarding letter grades, I do not grade on a curve. Also, I do not assign letter grades to individual exams but only compute them at the end of the quarter according to the weights listed just above. In general, you can expect 82% or higher to be an A, 62% or higher a B, and 45% or higher a C. I may lower these break points slightly if I discover at the end that I made the exams harder than I intended, but I usually find that these break points work well from one year to the next. Again, I will not grade on a curve. If every student scores above 62%, for example, I will be very happy to assign all A’s and B’s.

Class Courtesy: Please make a special effort to arrive at class on time. Also, please avoid leaving early. Students going in and out during the lecture are disruptive to the rest of the class and to me. If you unavoidably arrive late or absolutely must leave early, then please use the rear doors and take a seat in the back rows of the lecture hall. On Fridays, hand in assignments before or after the lecture, not while it is in progress.

Learning Physics Takes Work. Doing all of the reading assignments, participating in the lectures and labs, and working all of the assigned homework problems is the minimum effort needed to gain a competent understanding of each of the topics covered in this course. You should expect to work no less than about 16 hours per week on this course alone: 4 in lecture, 4 in lab (including preparation before the session), and 8 studying the book and doing homework (including attendance of the discussion sections). That is not unreasonable for 6 units of university credit. Depending on your abilities, to truly excel in the course may require somewhat more effort. Take a look at the introductory section in the textbook, “How to Succeed in Physics by Really Trying,” for some suggestions on study habits.

Start out strong and don’t fall behind! In any course, it is advisable to keep up with the work throughout the quarter, but that is especially crucial in physics. The material builds upon itself throughout the 3-quarter sequence. It is simply not possible to understand Chapter 3 if you do not first understand Chapter 2, and so forth. You cannot take a week off from the physics homework under the assumption that you will miss just 10% of the course. If you do so, you very likely will be in trouble the following week and the week after and so forth, unless you go back and learn the material that you missed. If you keep up with the pace every week, then you will be able to go into the exams with low stress and, hopefully, excel.