Physics 6C Introduction to Physics
III Autumn 2006
MWF 3:30–4:40 pm,
Thimann Lecture Hall, Room 3.
Instructor: Robert Johnson
Summary of items that you must provide for this course (see below for details):
Textbook: Physics for Scientists and Engineers, Randall D. Knight, available at the Bay Tree Bookstore. This course makes use of only Part VI: Electricity and Magnetism, Chapters 25 through 35.
Physics 6C Lab Manual: this should be available at the Bay Tree Bookstore by September 25.
Course Web page: I
will maintain a web page for this course at http://scipp.ucsc.edu/~johnson/phys6c/Physics_6C.htm.
This site includes course information, syllabus, information on the TAs, PDF copies
of the exams, copies of most of the slides that I will use in the lectures, and
homework and exam solutions.
Discussion Sections, led by graduate teaching assistant Jeff Jones:
Attendance of one of the discussion sections is recommended but not mandatory. They will concentrate on problem solving and understanding of concepts. Enrollment is not necessary.
Labs: The lab course Physics 6N accompanies this lecture course. There will be eight weeks of lab. See the syllabus for the schedule. With no exceptions, at least seven of the eight 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. Do not attend a lab section in which you are not enrolled without prior consent of both your TA and the other TA.
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.
Homework: Homework solutions are to be submitted online, through the Mastering Physics program (Class Identifier MPJOHNSON6C02). There will be 7 assignments, generally due by the end of the week, as indicated on the syllabus. However, I will allow you to work on them through the following weekend without loss of credit.
Due to much displeasure expressed by students for the self-tutoring homework problems, I will usually not assign them for a grade. I will suggest some, however, for those students who find them to be helpful. End-of-chapter problems and some conceptual problems will be counted for your grade, but only 10% overall. Where possible, the numerical data will be randomized to force everybody to make at least some unique effort. Because so many students have complained bitterly of cheating on homework (whether done in Mastering Physics or on paper), which I cannot do much about, I will not count homework for more than 10% of your grade. If you copy the solutions from another student or from an online source, you will only cheat yourself out of the learning experience and will likely suffer at exam time. As an extra motivator, a few of the exam problems will be nearly identical to assigned homework problems.
You enroll yourself in the Mastering Physics class, using your full name and student ID. Do not create extra fictitious Mastering Physics students, as we will check the list against the Physics 6C course enrollment and delete all extras.
Lectures and
Office Hours: All students are strongly encouraged to make use of my office hours. During those times you will be my first priority. 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 provide a schedule of office hours for the teaching assistants, so please make good use of those opportunities as well.
I am also receptive to relatively quick questions outside of my office hours, although you may have to look around a little to find me. 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, including most weekends. If you have specific questions that you can write down, then send them to me and I will respond as soon as possible.
Exams: Midterms:
October 18 and November 15, during the normal lecture period.
Final: Wednesday, December 6,
The exams will be designed to evaluate knowledge and conceptual understanding as well as problem solving. Part of each exam will consist of traditional problem solving, while the remainder will stress the concepts and relationships in more qualitative ways. The conceptual part may include short essay questions or some multiple choice questions similar to those frequently discussed in class (often I copy a few questions verbatim from lecture as a bonus for participating). I will post exams and solutions from last year for practice.
Exams will be closed book, with no notes allowed. I will expect you to memorize some basic formulæ and, especially, 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 that you should have learned in the prerequisite courses, if not earlier, such as the relationship between the area of a circle and its radius, definitions of trig functions, etc. I do not allow use of calculators with alphanumeric input during exams, because they facilitate cheating and are completely unnecessary. This includes all graphing calculators. Please bring a simple scientific calculator to exams (arithmetic, square root, logarithms, and basic trig functions are all that are necessary). Such calculators can be purchased for about $10, do all calculations needed on a physics exam, are less bulky than graphing calculators, and are simpler to use. Just be sure to practice with your calculator on homework problems before bringing it to the exams.
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 official documentation of your excuse. Also, 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 weights:
·
Homework: 10%.
·
Midterm exams: 25% each.
·
Final exam: 40%.
The laboratory grades are evaluated separately,
primarily by the teaching assistants.
I generally do not grade on a “curve.” I will try to evaluate your performance
against a fixed standard, not by comparing you with your fellow students. The grade break points are approximately 82% for
an A, 64% for a B, and 46% for a C, but these may vary downward somewhat depending
on how difficult the exams turn out to be (sometimes I misjudge the level of
difficulty when making the exam).
Class Courtesy: Please
make a special effort to arrive at class on time and 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 upper
doors and take a seat in the back rows of the lecture hall.
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 (perhaps including attendance of the discussion sections). That is reasonable for 6 units of university credit. Depending on your abilities and background, to truly excel in the course may require somewhat more effort. I recommend that you read the Preface to the Student in the textbook.
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 quarter.[1] It simply is not possible to understand Chapter 26 if you do not first understand Chapter 25, 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 weeks, 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.
[1] This applies from one quarter to another, also. Yes, I do expect you to remember the Physics 6A material, especially regarding work and energy, motion under constant acceleration, and circular motion!