PHYSICS 1120

Principles of Modern Physics II

Note: This syllabus is available on the WWW at

http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~cls/courses/p1120

TERM (Spring 2004-2005)

• • Lecturer: Dr. Chandralekha Singh

  • Office: 218 A Allen Hall

  • Office hours: 1-2 pm on Tues and Thurs or stop by anytime you find me in the office

  • Phone: 624-9045

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

  • Lectures: Tues, Thurs 9.15 am-10.35 am, (Thaw 104)

  • Text: Modern Physics for Scientists and Engineers, Thornton and Rex, second edition, Thompson-Brookes/Cole

  • Grader: will be announced later

Goals and Objectives

The major goal of this Modern Physics II 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

I hope we will be able to cover a majority of the remaining chapters (chapter 9 and beyond) in the book this semester. 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 will be a copy (or copies) on reserve in the Physics Library in OEH. It is highly recommended that students read the relevant chapter ahead of time. There may also be material covered in the class and in some homework assignments that will not be from the book. It is your responsibility to come to the class and to have knowledge of the material covered from the book and out of book. You 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. The homework will be on the material covered the previous week. Although I am giving you all of the homework for the whole semester, you have to come to lectures to find out what was covered in a particular week so that you can turn in homework on that the following week. The homework will be collected every Wednesday. You have the opportunity to ask questions about the homework every Monday at the beginning of the class. The solutions will be posted on the courseweb in course document folder on Friday. You are strongly encouraged to work on the questions/problems yourself before you get help. It is strongly recommended that you discuss the course material and homework with your peers but you CANNOT copy others homework solutions. There may occasionally be unannounced quizzes in the class. Homework/quiz performance will count approximately 20% 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 as possible before the solutions are posted in the physics library.

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 to see how many of you obtained the correct answer.

Study Resources

A Resource Room in 311 Thaw Hall will be available for help in understanding physics concepts and completing homework assignments.

Grading Policy

There will be three in-term exams and a cumulative final examination. The final examination time can be found from registrar's office. The in-term exams are tentatively expected to fall on: (Note: These are tentative dates that can be changed at the instructor's discretion. You are responsible for keeping track of any changes that are announced in class.)

• • Exam #1 Thurs, February 3

  • Exam #2 Thurs, March 3

  • Exam #3 Thurs, April 7

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 (22.5% each), the final exam (35%), and the homework grade (20% for homework/quizzes). There will be Absolutely no make-up midterm examinations. If you have any disability, please let me know as soon as you can so that appropriate arrangements can be made with disability resource center.