PHYSICS 0175

Basic Physics for Science and Engineering II

Note: This syllabus is available on the WWW at

http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~cls/courses/p0175

TERM (Fall 2012)

• Lecturer: Dr. Chandralekha Singh

• Office: 110H OEH

• Office hours: please catch me after the class on Monday and Friday or send an email to make an appointment

• Phone: 624-9045

• E-mail (BEST WAY TO CONTACT ME): clsingh@pitt.edu

• Lectures: Mon, Wed, Fri 8.40 am-9.50 am (Mon Oct 8 is a holiday and Oct 8 class will move to Oct 9), (104 Thaw Hall)

• Text: Fundamentals of Physics Extended , Halliday, Resnick, Walker(Custom Edition for 8th edition), Wiley

• Teaching Assistant: Qian Zhuoni (office:Thaw Hall)

• TA's email zhq8@pitt.edu

Goals and Objectives

The major goal of this physics course is to enable you to develop logical reasoning skills to explain or predict diverse phenomena in everyday experience, and to become good problem solvers and independent learners. I encourage you to participate fully in class discussions. Physics knowledge is hierarchical: new concepts rely heavily on solid understanding of prior material. I strongly encourage you to ask questions to clarify your doubts. Remember that all questions are good questions, and there is a good chance that if you are having trouble understanding a concept, others are also struggling with the same concept. "Plug-and-chug" approaches to physics are neither useful for developing problem solving, reasoning and higher order thinking skills that I hope you will develop nor likely to produce satisfactory results on examinations. I also want you to remember that struggling is a very natural part of learning. Do not get discouraged.

Course Description

The lecture material will follow the text fairly closely, and many of the assignments will be drawn from the text. Hence it is a good idea for you to purchase the text or have regular access to it (there is a copy of the textbook in the engineering library in Benedum Hall). In this course we will cover most of the chapters on electricity and magnetism and wave optics. It is highly recommended that students read the relevant chapter ahead of time. There will also be assignments that will not be from the book. Students are expected to have a working knowledge of calculus.

Online Stuff using Courseweb

Useful information including assignments for this course are available at the Courseweb site for this course. You can log on to this site by going to http://courseweb.pitt.edu and typing your university unix user name and password. This site can also be used for discussion forums related to this course in which your instructor and fellow classmates can participate.

Homework

Homework is an integral part of learning the material of this course. Homework will be assigned each Monday. Homework and recitation quizzes on the material covered in the class in a particular week will be due the FOLLOWING week. It is your responsibility to come to class to find out what was covered in a particular week so that you can prepare for homework and quizzes for the following week. The homework will be collected in the recitation and it will only be checked for completeness. 5% of the course grade will be determined by your performance on homework that is turned in by you. The solutions will be posted by the TA on the courseweb in the course document folder same week by Thursday evening or Friday morning (after all recitations are over). You are strongly encouraged to work on the questions/problems yourself before you get help. Often there will be self-help tutorials on the courseweb in course document folder related to the material covered in a particular week. It is in your interest to work on the tutorial each week. The tutorial takes a quantitative problem and breaks it into conceptual questions and provides guidance to help you understand the concepts. There will be a quiz in the recitation every week based upon the homework questions/problems/tutorial assigned the previous week. The questions/problems in the recitation quiz will not be exactly the same as homework/tutorial problems but will be based upon the same principles. If you understand the reasoning/concept behind the homework/tutorial questions/problems you should have no difficulty doing well on the quiz. However, if you try to memorize homework/tutorial problems, you will not do well on the recitation quizzes. Sometimes in the recitation, the quiz may involve group problem solving. The group problems will pertain to some real life situation related to the homework for that week. These context-rich (real life) problems will be more challenging and stimulating than the textbook problems and will help you appeciate how physics applies in everyday situations. They will also teach you good problem solving strategy which includes planning, implementation, and evaluation. The group work will count as a quiz and will be graded exactly as an individual quiz (all the group members present will receive the same score for the group work). Quiz performance will count approximately 15% in determining the final grade.

Due to the importance of the homework in helping you learn and apply the conceptual matter under discussion, and to prepare for examinations, you are highly encouraged to try as many of the assigned problems/questions/tutorial as possible before they are discussed and solutions presented on the courseweb. The in-term examinations will involve problem solving to demonstrate mastery of the material, and the best preparation will be a thorough understanding of the assigned problems and questions.

Effective Problem Solving Strategies

Since the goal of this course is to develop your reasoning and problem solving skills, I expect you to solve physics problems employing effective problem solving strategies, which includes analysis, planning, implementation and reflection rather than solving the problems haphazardly. I will model this method in class, and it will be necessary to follow this method to receive any partial credit in weekly quizzes and exams.

Physics Exploration Center

For a good understanding of physics concepts learned during the lectures, you will be assigned hands-on bonus problems each week which involve the use of the Physics Exploration Center (PEC). PEC is a learning center (entrance through Physics Resource Room, Thaw 311/312)where lecture demonstrations have been modified and turned into small experiments for you to explore. Concrete experiences provided by the hands-on activities are very important for conceptual understanding of physical phenomena. Exploration assignments can help you earn up to 10% bonus towards your final grade. You must get the exploration assignment signed by the TA in 311 Thaw Hall (the door through which you enter PEC) to ensure that you actually did the exploration yourself. Exploration assignments will be given out in class every week and they will be due the following week in recitation. You are encouraged to go through the exploration worksheet handed out in class BEFORE you go to PEC to maximize the benefit of these assignments. You are encouraged to go there with a couple of classmates and discuss what you observed and how it relates to what you are learning in the class with each other. However, you cannot copy each other's work on any of these bonus assignments.

Peer Instruction

To ensure that you are understanding the underlying concepts covered during the lecture, I will interrupt the class several times during each lecture to pose a conceptual question. You will be asked first to think about the question by yourself, and later discuss it with your neighbor. Then, I will poll the class using the personal response system to see how many of you obtained the correct answer. Each student will be assigned a personal response system transmitter or clicker. Please put your backpacks in your seats before picking up YOUR transmitter from the bins. At the end of the class, please return the transmitter to the correct bin number. The class participation through these transmitters count for 5% of your course grade. If you get the response correct after discussion with your peers, you will get 100%. If you do not get the response correct after discussion with your peers, but participated in all questions that were asked, you will still get 80%. There will be ABSOLUTELY no makeup for class-participation points lost due to absences from class due to any reason.

Study Resources

A Resource Room will be available throughout the semester for help in understanding physics concepts and completing homework assignments. Your TA will let you know more about his availablity in the room in 311/312 Thaw Hall (resource room). However, you can also get help from other TAs in the resource room. The resource room is generally staffed with TAs from 9 am -4 pm Monday through Friday but there may be some gaps within this period due to the availability of TAs. Therefore, you should look at the schedule on the door of 311/312 Thaw Hall to see when would be the best time to go for help from the TA and to perform your exploration assignments (for which you have to enter through the resource room).

Grading Policy

There will be three midterm exams and a two hour cumulative final examination. The final examination time can be found from registrar's office. The midterm exams are tentatively expected to fall on (Note: The dates for the midterms are only tentative and can be changed any time based upon the instructor's discretion.):

• Exam #1 Fri., Sept 28

• Exam #2 Fri., Nov 2

• Exam #3 Fri., Nov 30

The lowest performance of the three in-term exams will be dropped. The course grade is expected to be determined by two in-term exam grades (20% each), the final exam (35%), class participation with clickers (5%) and the recitation grade (20% for homework/quizzes) and 10% bonus for PEC (exploration homework). All disputes about homework or exam or quiz grades must be resolved with the TA and instructor within a week from the time this material was returned to the class. Even if an individual student did not pick up their homework or exam or quiz for a while, this one week grace period for resolving the grading disputes is from the date these graded tasks are returned to the class (and not from the time an individual student picked it from the TA). In practice the recitation performance often determines which side of a borderline (e.g., A to B or C- to D) the final grade will fall on. There will be absolutely no make-up midterm examination. Also, the midterm exams or final exam will not be given ahead of time so please plan to be there for the exams. If you have any disability and must take the exams in the disability resource center, please let me know as soon as you can.