PHYS 2325
University Physics I
Fall 2007
Last changes August 28, 2007
Course Description: (3 hours credit, 3 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; credit or registration in MATH 2413 or equivalent.
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. A second course with lab, or a lecture/lab course pair, is also required.
Meetings:
Sec. 001: Lecture 9:00-9:50 MWF, Hill 117
Supplemental Instruction meeting: Sec. 100: 1:00-1:50 MW, H 202. See below.
Faculty: Dr. Paul H. Cox,
Professor
Office: Hill 211
Phone: (361)593-2623; or department phone 2618.
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):
MWF 12:00-12:50; TR 9:30-12:50
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
Supplemental Instruction:
This is an attempt to improve student performance by providing
additional, scheduled, time to work on confusing or difficult
aspects of this course. Studies elsewhere and in other classes have
shown that such participation leads to improvement in homework
and test scores. Students who register for Sec. 001 are supposed
to also register in Sec. 100, which will meet two hours a week
with a student leader. The leader will be in regular touch with
me about the questions raised, but naming no names. At the
end of the semester I will ask him to identify which students
have attended 90% or more of the sessions, which 80-90%, which
70-80%, so that I can add 5, 3, or 1% respectively as extra
credit on your lecture score. Otherwise the only grade effect of
participating, or not, will be due to the opportunity to improve
your understanding of physics through interacting with a more
advanced student and with each other.
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: Young and Freedman, Sears and Zemansky's University Physics, Twelfth 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 and also in the physics departmental library room, Hill 204.)
Evaluation:
30% (over one quarter) of your semester 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 necessarily
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 at chapter ends, sometimes over single
chapters, sometimes over two or more if one or more of those chapters are less
central to the course.
15% of your semester point score will come from online assignments. These
will be selected from material provided by the textbook publisher. To
access them you will need nformation which will be given in class.
This will consist of problems from the text, with randomized values
substituted for numerical inputs.
5% of your semester point score will come from class particpation. Once
the text is available, I will ask students to present problems in class.
A good, correct presentation will earn points here; if a presentation is
poor, another student can volunteer to improve it and earn the credit.
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.
If there are degree candidates
in the class, they should notify me early in the semester, and remind me about
two weeks before finals. If so, an early final will be scheduled if necessary to
meet their requirements. Once it is scheduled, if it is, any other student who
prefers to finish the course early may also take the final at that
time.
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 Mechanics, some of
Thermodynamics, will be covered: Chapters 1-12, 14, 17-18, possibly 13; if
time permits (very rare) on to Ch. 20. Chapters 15-16 and from 21 on
(though Ch. 37 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. (An early final scheduled because of degree candidates will
still cover the entire term's material.)
| Quiz # | Chapters covered | Estimated date |
| 1 | 1: Intro, Units | F Aug. 31 |
| 2 | 1,3,2: Vectors, Motion | F Sep. 14 |
| 3 | 4: Newton's Laws | W Sep. 26 |
| 4 | 5: ", Friction, Circles | W Oct. 3 |
| 5 | 6,7: Work, Energy | F Oct. 12 |
| 6 | 8: Impulse, Momentum | M Oct. 22 |
| 7 | 9,10,12: Rotation, Gravity | W Oct. 31 |
| 8 | 11,14: Equilibrium, Elasticity, Fluids | F Nov. 9 |
| 9 | 13: Oscillation | F Nov. 16 |
| 10 | 17,18: Temperature, Heat | W Nov. 28 |
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.
The faculty reserves the right to check submitted work for plagiarism, including by the use of suitable software.
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.
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.