Physics 1110 — General Physics 1
Fall 2006 Information
Physics 1110, General Physics 1, is the first semester of a
three-semester calculus-based introductory physics sequence. Our physics focus primarily concerns
mechanics: the how, when, and why things move or donÕt move. Towards the end of the semester, we
will also investigate the physics of heat and thermodynamics. Our goal is for you to learn to
approach, solve, and understand a wide variety of physics problems on both
qualitative and quantitative levels, and to relate Òclassroom physicsÓ to the real
world in which we live. We will emphasize conceptual
understanding along with problem solving
skills. We will begin with a study
of linear motion and mechanics (forces, masses, and acceleration) associated
with the world-changing notions and discoveries of Galileo and Newton. We will see that conservation laws
(e.g. energy and momentum) provide a wonderful and powerful alternative for
understanding physics and solving problems. We will continue with applications and extensions of these
fundamentals, including, for example, rotational motion and vibration.
Problem solving will be strongly emphasized throughout the course. This is much more than simply learning which formulas to apply: we will work towards gaining the skill and confidence to use intuition – to test and understand solutions, not just ÒarriveÓ at them. Accomplishing this will require your patience and most of all practice. Skill is acquired by working through homework problems. I expect you are aware that mastery of any art or athletic discipline involves a great deal of practice, often considerable repetition of exercises designed to enhance your skills, exercises that are often not particularly beautiful or enjoyable. Mastery of physics is the same.
The course includes both classroom and laboratory components. Prof.Õs Dana Z. Anderson and Ed Kinney will jointly instruct the class. Primarily, though not exclusively, Prof. Anderson will responsible for the lecture periods and exams, while Prof. Kinney is primarily responsible for the homework, recitation sections and working with the teaching assistants.
Duane G-1B30 MWF
Section 001: 9:00 – 9:50
Section 002: 11:00 – 11:50
No explicit physics background is expected or required. We assume a solid working knowledge of
trigonometry (sine, cosine, tangent) and algebra. You should take/have taken Calc I (Math 1300/APPM 1350)
prior to or in parallel with this course.
Lecturer:
Prof. Dana Z. Anderson
Room: JILA Tower, Room A406a
Email: dana@jila.colorado.edu
Voice: (303) 492-5202
ÒBackstageÓ Professor:
Prof. Edward R. Kinney
Room: Gamow Tower, Duane Phys Room F219
Email: Edward.Kinney@colorado.edu
Voice: (303) 492-0455
Assistant to Prof. Anderson
Ms. Erica Mady (303) 492-1128; mady@jilau1.colorado.edu
Instructor Office Hours
Prof. Anderson:
MW: 10:00 AM – 10:50 AM (in the Help Room)
Prof. Kinney
T: 1:00 PM – 1:50 PM (In the Help Room)
W: 2:00 PM – 2:50 PM (in the Help Room)
TAÕs
To be announced
Web Site
The course web page will be used to make announcements and
post reminders. It is a good idea
to check it daily. A course
calendar, solutions to the homeworks, and exams will also be posted there as
well a summaries of the lectures.
Concept tests and their answers will appear on the web after the
lectures. The URL is http://www.colorado.edu/physics/phys1110/phys1110_fa06.
In December 2001, the University announced that e-mail would
be an official means of communication, so that students must have e-mail accounts on reliable systems and must check their e-mail
regularly. In this course, we will assume that any announcement sent out by
noon on a given day, is known by everyone by 8am the next morning. It is
probably wisest to check at least twice a day. Be aware that Hotmail
occasionally delays the delivery of email by several days, so it is not
recommended.
Text and Workbook
Physics for Scientists and Engineers – A Strategic Approach, by Randall D. Knight, Volumes 1 and 2, and Tutorials in Introductory Physics + Homework, by Lillian C. McDermott et al.
Online Assignment Access
You will need a Student Access Kit for Mastering
Physics. Mastering Physics
provides online homework assignment access. The Access Kit is bundled with yet
another workbook but we do not use the workbook.
Remote Response Devices
Individual remote response devices
are required to respond to in-class knowledge questions. These ÒclickersÓ are available at the
bookstore. Each individual clicker
must be registered at http://capa.colorado.edu/cgi-bin/RegisterAFS
In order to promote the greatest information transfer during
the lecture period you, as the student, are expected to read and carry out any
other assigned material before class and be prepared to participate in class
discussions. Reading assignments
are provided in the course calendar. We will cover approximately one chapter of
the textbook per week.
Reading the book is an essential part of this course. As mentioned above, students are
expected to have completed the reading assignments prior to the lecture. The lectures are designed with the
assumption that students have carried out the reading, and therefore it is
ineffective to rely solely on the lectures to understand the material.
In addition to lectures, the course is organized so that
each week on Thursdays you will meet in much smaller groups for an hour. Much of the focus will be on working
through Tutorials text that accompanies your Knight texts. You must bring the Tutorial text to
recitation. You should also bring a blue, red, and black colored
pencil, as well as a short (say 6Ó) ruler. As is true of the lecture, attendance is mandatory and a
portion of your grade will be derived from participation in these recitations.
An online pretest on the material you cover on Thursday will be due by 8am
Thursday morning; there will be a weekly assignment from the Tutorial Homework
as well, which will be due promptly at the beginning of recitation.
Students who attend class are expected to arrive on time (on
the hour) and leave after the instructor has completed the lecture, which will
usually be about 10 minutes before the hour. Late arrivals and early departures tend to disrupt the class
in G-1B30.
Newspaper reading, listening to music, doing homework, etc. disrupt
the general tenor and spirit of the interactive classroom. Such activities are therefore
prohibited. A student found
violating this policy will receive an absent mark for the lecture period, and
may be asked to leave.
In general, students and faculty each have responsibility
for maintaining an appropriate learning environment. Students who fail to
adhere to such behavioral standards may be subject to discipline. Faculty have
the professional responsibility to treat all students with understanding,
dignity and respect, to guide classroom discussion and to set reasonable limits
on the manner in which they and their students express opinions. Professional courtesy and sensitivity
are especially important with respect to individuals and topics dealing with
differences of race, culture, religion, politics, sexual orientation, gender
variance, and nationalities. Class
rosters are provided to the instructor with the student's legal name. The
instructor(s) will gladly honor your request to address you by an alternate
name or gender pronoun. Please advise the instructor of this preference early
in the semester so that he may make appropriate changes to my records. See polices at:
http://www.colorado.edu/policies/classbehavior.html
and at
http://www.colorado.edu/studentaffairs/judicialaffairs/code.html
- student_code
There will be three 90 minutes in-term exams and a final exam. The in-term exams will be administered on Tuesday evenings, September 26th, October 24th, and November 28th in MUEN E050, MATH 100 and CHEM 140. The final exam will be cumulative and will be held on Tuesday December 19th, at 7:30 PM – 10:00 PM.
The exams will be closed-book. The instructor will either provide a formula and constants
sheet, or a single formula sheet will be permitted — details will be
provided prior to the exams. CALCULATORS ARE NOT ALLOWED (including those on
palmtop computers, PDAÕs, PIMÕs etc).
Music players, cell phones and other communication technology may also
not be brought to the exam.
Problem sets will be assigned weekly, generally on Wednesday
except when it falls on a holiday. We
will be using a new interactive on-line homework system called "Mastering
Physics." Your homework solutions will be entered into the computer
directly, with instantaneous feedback given. Online hints will also be
available for those that need them. Homeworks will generally be due on Wednesday
evenings at the time listed on the Mastering Physics homework page. On exam
weeks the homeworks will be shortened somewhat and the deadline extended until
Thursday evening. Note that even for a few days past the due date you
will be able to work on the problems, but at a reduced score.
Please be patient with
us if there are some initial bugs.
1. Go to www.masteringphysics.com
2. Click on the Knight book cover
3. Click on the Register button
4. Enter the 30 character access
code inside the pull tab in your Mastering Physics Student Access Kit.
Fill in the information they ask for.
Make up a username and password you can remember.
5. The Course
ID is MPUNIVCOLOFALL06
6. Enter your university student ID
number.
You are encouraged to
work together on the homeworks, but each person must enter her/his own
solutions. Do not fall into the trap of working with a group where others
routinely provide solutions; you will have big problems with the exams, which
you take alone. Using ``master formulas'' or guessing answers really destroys
the learning process; try to avoid it at all costs.
Class attendance is required and in Lecture is taken using
the remote response devices (ÒclickersÓ). There will be frequent in-class
questions with responses recorded by clickers. Therefore
you will need to bring your "clicker'' or electronic transmitter to
lecture each day to be used for audience feedback. You will get extra
credit towards your exam scores based upon your clicker usage as follows:
Throughout the semester you well get one point for each response to a question
and three points for the correct response. Your total clicker score will
then replace up to 10% of your exam grade using the following algorithm:
{(1-0.1c)*x + 0.1*c} where x=exam score and c=clicker score, both
normalized to one. Therefore, if you get an exam grade of 75% (x=0.75)
and all clicker questions correct (c=1) you will get an exam score of {0.9*.75
+ 0.1*1}=.775 or a final exam score of 77.5%.
The course topics that
we will cover in Physics 1110 are among the greatest intellectual achievements
of humans. Don't be surprised if you have to think hard and work hard to master
the material. You can perform very well in this class if you follow this
time-tested system:
We accommodate all forms of personal circumstances that lead
to missed classes and late assignments by the following policy: We drop the
lowest four lecture participation scores
(due to absence or otherwise) and we drop the lowest two homework assignment scores. Thus you may miss up to four lectures
and two assignments without impact to your grade. This accommodates all personal reasons for delays, absences,
missed assignment deadlines and so forth due to, for example, illness, travel,
athletic travel, religious activities, or just plain bad hair day.
As a consequence, late
assignments are not accepted, and missed absences cannot be made up. For assignments, this holds whether
they are 5 days late or 5 minutes late.
This policy is non-negotiable with the exception of extraordinary circumstances that are beyond the studentÕs control
such as a family death or similar emergency, extended illness (however, a
cancelled airline flight, for example, does not fall into this ÒextraordinaryÓ
category). Usually the student
will be required to provide an independent letter (such as from a Doctor) that
substantiates the circumstances and verifies the studentÕs inability to meet
the course expectations over the time period in question.
You may be excused
from an exam only for a medical or personal emergency beyond your control. You
must present written documentation to us no later than one week subsequent to
the exam you missed. (Again, a cancelled airline flight does not fall into the
Òpersonal emergencyÓ category, for example. And not knowing which room your exam is in is not beyond your control).
If you are excused from
an exam, your grade will be based upon your remaining exam scores. In the (unusual) case of an (at most, single) excused absence,
your other exams will be used to compute an exam average. There are no make-up exams given.
The various scores are weighed into a final letter grade
calculation according to the weighting value shown in the following table:
|
Item |
Date |
Value (%) |
|
In-term Exam I |
09/26/05 |
15 |
|
In-term Exam II |
10/14/05 |
15 |
|
In-term exam III |
11/28/05 |
15 |
|
Final Exam |
12/19/05 |
20 |
|
Homework assignments |
Weekly |
20 |
|
Recitation |
Weekly |
15 |
|
Clicker |
Daily |
See sec 5.3 |
|
Total |
— |
100 |
Grades are ÒcurvedÓ and it is useful to understand how curving is done at various stages in order to derive a final letter grade, and how curving, along with the student score distributions, can affect your grade at any given stage.
Each item in the above has a numerical score for each student. These scores are fit to a ÒNormalÓ (Gaussian) distribution giving a mean and a standard deviation. This distribution is then ÒcurvedÓ by a straightforward formula to give a mean of approximately 75 and a standard deviation of about 13. At that point a letter grade is generated for that score according to a standard formula that leads to approximately 10% AÕs, 20% BÕs, 40% CÕs, 20% DÕs and 10% FÕs. Note that this process of curving mitigates the problem of excessively hard or excessively easy exams, for example. However, also note that your letter grade can go either up or down due to the curving process. In the latter case, you will be disappointed to see what looked like a ÒBÓ score turn out to be ÒC+Ó, but of course you will be happy if the opposite occurs. But the fact is, the curving process indicates how you have performed with respect to the rest of the class. Another, sometimes upsetting, outcome of curving arises when the spread of scores is very small. If everyone receives a 95 out of 100 on an exam, that will translate to a 75% = C when the scores are curved. ThatÕs annoying but inevitable with curving. On the other hand, your grade would be raised to a C by curving if everyone receives 50%=F on an exam.
At the end of the semester all of the scores for the various
items are weighted according to the value in the above table and summed
together, giving a total score for each student. The scores that are weighted are the curved scores, not the raw scores for each item. The use of the curved scores rather
than the raw ones is required in order to make the weighting meaningful. The student total weighted scores are
now curved again to obtain a
normal distribution.
This last curving is done in such a way so as to set the median class score to approximately define the C/C+ letter grade boundary. Typically this sets the class average letter grade to approximately C+.
When you receive your final grade, you should see that it is
more or less consistent with your individual (curved) grades on the exams,
assignments, and so on (taking the weighting into account). If there seems to be a discrepancy, by
all means speak with the instructor as the possibility of errors is real.
Barring errors, the instructor is not in a position to
negotiate grades as it is unfair to the remainder of the class to raise one
individualÕs grade without reconsideration of all the grades. An exception involves extraordinary
circumstances beyond the studentÕs control (as in Section 7.1). Such circumstances may well lead to a
consideration for a grade of incomplete, IP or IF.
All students of the University of Colorado at Boulder are responsible
for knowing and adhering to the academic integrity policy of this institution.
Violations of this policy may include: cheating, plagiarism, aid of academic
dishonesty, fabrication, lying, bribery, and threatening behavior. All incidents of academic misconduct
shall be reported to the Honor Code Council (honor@colorado.edu;
303-725-2273). Students who are found to be in violation of the academic
integrity policy will be subject to both academic sanctions from the faculty
member and non-academic sanctions (including but not limited to university
probation, suspension, or expulsion). Other information on the Honor Code can
be found at:
http://www.colorado.edu/policies/honor.html
and at
http://www.colorado.edu/academics/honorcode/
If you qualify for accommodations because of a disability,
please submit to the instructor a letter from Disability Services within the
first two weeks of class so that your needs may be addressed. Disability
Services determines accommodations based on documented disabilities. Contact: 303-492-8671, Willard 322,
and/or www.Colorado.EDU/disabilityservices
Campus policy regarding religious observances requires that
faculty make every effort to reasonably and fairly deal with all students who,
because of religious obligations, have conflicts with scheduled exams,
assignments or required attendance. The schedule of exams may be found in the
course calendar. Please notify the
instructor of a Religious conflict with the exam schedule in a letter submitted
within the first two weeks of class. See full details at http://www.colorado.edu/policies/fac_relig.html
The University of Colorado at Boulder policy on
Discrimination and Harassment (http://www.colorado.edu/policies/discrimination.html,
the University of Colorado policy on Sexual Harassment and the University of
Colorado policy on Amorous Relationships applies to all students, staff and
faculty. Any student, staff or
faculty member who believes s/he has been the subject of discrimination or
harassment based upon race, color, national origin, sex, age, disability,
religion, sexual orientation, or veteran status should contact the Office of
Discrimination and Harassment (ODH) at 303-492-2127 or the Office of Judicial
Affairs at 303-492-5550.
Information about the ODH and the campus resources available to assist
individuals regarding discrimination or harassment can be obtained at http://www.colorado.edu/odh
All information in
this syllabus is as accurate as is possible at the time of writing.
Announcements about changes of any kind will be made via e-mail as well as in
class and on the web page, and will take precedence over this syllabus. You are
responsible for announcements made in class, whether or not you are in
attendance.