PHYS 2325
University Physics I
Summer 2007

Last changes June 4, 2007

Course Description: (3 hours credit, 8 hours lecture per week) A calculus-based introduction to physics. Topics include: kinematics, vector analysis, force dynamics, equilibrium, work, energy, momentum, collisions, fluid dynamics, and thermal physics. Prerequisite: One year of high school physics or PHYS 1305, 1105. Corequisite: MATH 2313.

This course qualifies toward fulfilling the general education requirements at Texas A&M University-Kingsville in the area of Science, provided the accompanying laboratory course, PHYS 2125, is also taken.

Meetings:
Sec. 001: Lecture 8:00-9:50 MTWF, Hill 119

Faculty: Dr. Paul H. Cox, Professor
Office: Hill 211
Phone: (361)593-2623; or department phone 2618. University phones have voice mail; my not being in when you wanted to call is no excuse.
email: phcox at tamuk.edu
Department fax number: (361)593-2184
webpage:http://physics.tamuk.edu/~cox/ (Note no www on the front.)
Office hours:
Scheduled office hours (subject to change):
MTWR 10:00-11:00, 1:00-2:00
Note: I may be elsewhere in the building during these times, but what I'm doing will usually be interruptable.
Unscheduled Office Hours by appointment
Informal office hours when in

Course objectives:
Students who should pass this course will be able to:
(1) Work correctly with physical quantities. This includes correct and complete treatment of appropriate units, which includes mathematically correct combining of units and correct conversion of different units (whether within metric, i.e., using prefixes, or between "British" and metric). This also includes correct treatment of accuracy in data.
(2) Work correctly with vector quantities, especially when information does not group direction and size data; work both with size-and-direction forms and with component forms of vector data, and convert between them.
(3) Analyze situations to recognize all the information which is present and all the influences which must be acting; identify all the forces; and group those forces which are on a relevant object.
(4) Solve new problems, using general principles and techniques, in the areas discussed in the course: motion, forces and Newton's Laws, work and energy, impulse and momentum, rotation, fluids, temperature and heat, etc.

Student learner outcomes: Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to recognize, in unfamiliar contexts, the concepts covered in the course, and will be able to apply these concepts to work unfamiliar problems, as evidenced by satisfactory completion of an assessment exam.

Text: Serway and Jewett, Physics for Scientists and Engineers, Sixth edition. We will use mostly the first half; PHYS 2326 will cover roughly the second half. (The material can be learned from any text at this level if you just study by topic, not by chapter number. There are several such texts in Jernigan Library.)
For some additional resources specific to my teaching, see the course webpage, which is listed on my homepage.

Evaluation:
30% (over one quarter) of your course point score will come from the final exam. It will take place at the time indicated in the published schedules. The final will be comprehensive, though not uniformly nor completely so.
50% (one half) of your semester point score will come from quizzes. Each quiz will be scored as twenty-five to fifty points, at usually 10 or 15 points per problem depending on length, importance, and difficulty. Each such point will be worth about a tenth of a percent of your course grade; the exact value will depend on the number of quizzes, which may vary due to unforeseen circumstances. Quizzes will be usually every other day, covering entire chapters, sometimes over single chapters, sometimes over two or more if one or more of those chapters are less central to the course.
20% of your semester point score will come from assignments. These will be on-line, selected from material provided by the textbook publisher. To access them you will need the website address and the Course Access Code, given in class. This will consist of problems from the text, with randomized values substituted for numerical inputs.

Evaluation, forms:
Most test (quiz and final) questions will be short problems. Multiple-choice or other short-answer question forms may be used occasionally, generally graded all-or-nothing. (The final exam may be about 1/4 to 1/3 [by total value] multiple choice.) Otherwise, partial credit will be possible when earned by legible, comprehensible work, but such credit may be lost due to accompanying incorrect steps; correct answers accompanied by incorrect steps or incorrect usages will not receive full credit. Certain significant errors will receive substantial penalties whether relevant to work or not (and can cancel partial credit; however, negative scores will not be given). This includes incorrect use of units, vector notation, and equal signs.
Point values awarded in my grading will be determined generally by penalizing steps not reached and mistakes made (not according to an A-quality = 90%, etc., scale). Hence total points scored will be curved at term end before assigning letter grades, unless that would produce downward revisions. The amount added to raw scores to determine final scores has frequently been 30% of the possible score.

Attendance, etc.:
Prompt regular attendance is important to success in every scheduled endeavor, including classes. However, attendance carries rather little weight in this course. If you can complete the assignments and score high (honestly) on all the quizzes and the final, you can receive an A without sitting through any other part of the course. (However, that is extremely implausible unless you are registered for this course only in order to validate knowledge acquired elsewhere.)
You should recognize that, in accordance with Murphy's Law, the time you miss will probably be the only time that some concept will be covered that will mean ten or twenty points on a quiz and/or the final. Actions such as coming late, leaving early, being interrupted by cell phones, etc., unless they are substantially disruptive, are matters of infractions of courtesy to your classmates, and I leave responding to such disruptions to their discretion.
Make-up quizzes will not be given. If absences on a quiz date are foreseeable, an early quiz may be arranged. Otherwise, if the circumstances causing the absence warrant, a substitute credit based on other quiz results may be allowed (it will be calculated near the end of the term, when I have enough information to estimate your performance relative to your peers). The amount of allowable substitute credit will depend on the circumstances, and will also be a decreasing function of the time when I receive information about the circumstances.
Reminder: If you are taking PHYS 2325 because of a program requirement, you will normally be required to register for 2125 at some time. If you are repeating and/or you are not clear on your requirements, see me after lecture.
I do not drop students for excessive absences, normally; if you simply stop coming, you may expect to receive an F. Further, under government regulations you may face financial penalties.

Content, schedule:
This text is divided into chapters, grouped in "Parts"; most material in the Part that covers Motion and Dynamics, some of Heat and Thermodynamics, and possibly a chapter of Oscillations and Waves, will be covered: Chapters 1-14, 19-20, possibly 15; if time permits (very rare) on to Ch. 22. Chapters 15-19 and from 23 on (though Ch. 39 is rarely reached) are allocated to PHYS 2326. The order during this semester will be approximately that in the text. Handouts or webpage references may be provided for some material.
Besides the assigned on-line homework, a recommended problem list may be developed; in its absence, you may consider all odd-numbered problems in the text to be suggested. Such problems will not be graded, but like the homework may be examples for lecture discussion. Test questions should generally be comparable.
The pace should be close to a chapter a week; students are expected to read ahead so as to be prepared with questions on any confusing points. Each quiz problem will involve at least some material since the preceding quiz, but may be cumulative as well. The final will be comprehensive, though with somewhat more than proportional coverage of material not tested earlier.

Quiz #	Chapters covered	Estimated date
1	1: Intro, Units	Tu June 5
2	3,4,2: Vectors, Motion	Th June 7
3	5: Newton's Laws	Tu June 12
4	6: ", Friction, Circles	Th June 14
5	7,8: Work, Energy	Tu June 19
6	9: Impulse, Momentum	Th June 21
7	10,11,13: Rotation, Gravity	Tu June 26
8	12,14: Equilibrium, Elasticity, Fluids	Th June 28
9	15,19,20: Oscillation, Temperature, Heat	Tu July 3

Misconduct: See the Student Handbook. Students who engage in any form of misconduct are subject to disciplinary procedures. This includes academic misconduct which specifically includes plagiarism and all forms of cheating.

My quiz/test problems will be story problems and will require thinking; knowing formulas will not be enough. It will sometimes not be obvious where to start in order to arrive at the required answer, while in many cases information will be provided that seems related but is not actually required. If you don't see how to get the final answer but do see how to get some addtional values, do that and then look at the overall problem again with the new information. On quizzes, each problem will relate substantially to a current topic but will often require additional steps based on previous material; on the final the same applies except that the topic and the extra steps can be from any part of the course.

A special warning: a problem being in a multiple-choice format does not necessarily mean it is a quick-answer problem; it principally means that applying the correct concept, rather than the details or accuracy of the calculation, is being assessed.

The purpose of tests is to see if you have learned at least some of what you were supposed to. In a physics course that learning does not involve straight memorization, it involves understanding of basic principles and of how to apply them. The reason physics is required by most curricula that require it, is that people in that field believe it is important for you to understand these principles and be able to use them in new situations - the situations that were not covered in your courses. The only way to test if you have some degree of that ability is to give you test problems that call for you to apply your knowledge in a new situation, or at least one that is at least somewhat different from those that were previously discussed. Unfortunately this calls for a skill which may not be teachable; the only way I know to acquire it is practice, on as varied a problem set as needed. A recommended problem list is only a minimum, intended to be extensive enough to include problems covering all the major topics, without being very repetitive. If you have trouble, repetition with variations may be an answer, and is the reason that physics textbooks have long lists of problems. Countering the necessity of a possibly unteachable skill as a requirement for mastery of physics, is the fact that mastery of that skill is not required for progress in physics; since I curve grades, as low as 40% of possible points has been known to be a passing grade.

Physics is not a subject one can learn by only listening and reading; it requires practice. A few students in this course have had sufficient correct practice before starting this course; most students should expect to have to allocate substantial amounts of time - not on the night before the final - to this material.

"If you don't ask questions, you stay stuck wherever you are." - Madeleine L'Engle

In some courses, just memorizing key sections of the readings can be a shortcut to a good grade. In physics, equations are a key part, but just memorizing key equations is a shortcut to a terrible grade.
If you rely only on memorizing, you run several risks. Your memory can slip (especially since there are instances of different equations that are similar but inequivalent). You can misinterpret a memorized equation (for instance, using a volume for v in a formula that intends v for speed). Worst, you can use a true equation that doesn't address your problem.
Most of the more-used equations in this course are a matter of putting a relatively straightforward concept into standard mathemetical form. Hence, if you have grasped the concept, then (a) using the correct equation should be a simple exercise, and (b) if a problem involves an eccentric variation on the concept, you should still be able to recognize what to do.
If on the other hand you have only memorized the formulas, then you run the earlier-mentioned risks, and also if an eccentric variation comes along, you will probably be totally lost.

A further suggestion that may help you organize your learning: For EACH technical term that we introduce, you will need to learn AT LEAST TWO relationships which you can use to find a value for such a quantity; only one of those relationships can be the definition. We include a lot of information in this semester; while we may introduce names (for example, Newton's Second Law) that are only to shorten how we refer to some concept, we will introduce technical terms only when they are useful for expressing a relationship between two different quantities. Hence you should be able to use EITHER side of the relationship to come up with a value associated with the term.

IF YOU DON'T ASK YOUR QUESTION, IT PROBABLY WON'T GET ASKED. And in that case you won't have the knowledge you need come test time. Don't wait, thinking to ask someone else; they are likely to have an inadequate answer, if not a wrong one, if they have an answer at all. As college students, you are becoming adults, expected to act responsibly on your requirements; you are also expected to be learning how to acquire knowledge on your own initiative, not waiting for it to be handed to you. If you are having problems, I will probably recognize that you are having trouble; I will probably NOT recognize what your exact difficulty is. Even if I do recognize what your difficulty is, I won't come to you to resolve it. In most cases I can't recognize what your specific difficulty is until you can put it into some specific question.