Fall 2007
Introduction
Physics 247-248-249 is a new approach to studying introductory physics. Over the next three semesters, you will learn about almost every major area of physics. These include condensed matter, particle, astro, plasma, atomic, nuclear, and biophysics – and the list is growing. We will build up to these topics in a different way than most traditional courses do. We will introduce modern concepts as soon as possible, rather than following a purely historical development. We think this order makes pedagogical sense for physics majors, and it means you will learn modern physics in parallel with, rather than after, classical physics. Of course, we will still discuss the famous original experiments in many areas of physics.
Physics is a subject (as is the case for all sciences) in which there can be little teaching. The student must learn the subject. The Instructors can advise, guide, assist and otherwise make the learning more efficient, but the student must be proactive in assimilating the information into his/her world view. This is a qualitatively different process than the more frequently encountered authority figure declaiming "truth" and requiring the student only to memorize the information. Critical thinking, creative doubt and logical argument are the tools of the scientist. Moreover, the final arbiter is nature itself - that is, the test by experiment. One of the goals of the laboratory experience is to build confidence in the students ability to confront hypothesis and experiment and to extract the extent of confirmation of his/her expectations.
The basic procedure used in Physics 247 is as follows:
- Read about the topic ( textbook) This is your primary source.
- Untangle it ( pre-flight, lectures, discussion, office hours) Resolve questions & uncertainty
- Play with it ( labs) Validate your new knowledge base.
- Challenge yourself (homework) Calculate a quantitative expectation.
- Close the loop ( exams) Demonstrate your new ability.
Reading technical material for content and understanding is difficult. This first attempt at learning is to read the assigned chapter in the textbook -- on your own and prior to lecture (1). All of the following items are only helpful if this is done seriously.
The lecture (2) will not simply reprise what you have read, rather it is intended to resolve the misconceptions and difficulties you have encountered in understanding. We will expand/explain them, often with the aid of demonstrations.
Your participation is required both prior to and during each lecture! Before every lecture you will be required to work through a brief "Pre-Flight" on the Web. Each Pre-Flight will probe your understanding of the reading material assigned for that lecture, and must be completed by 8am on the day of the lecture to receive credit. Your answers to these questions will be used by the lecturer in preparation of the material for that day's lecture. The pre-flight questions may be taken from the "two-minute" problems given at the end of each chapter and will be graded though not heavily weighted in the final grade.
Do not expect to learn everything from the lecture. Your reading of the textbook before and after the lecture and the problem solving sessions are where much of the learning is done.
As you might note, this is not the conventional approach. However, this process has been very successful at other major research universities as determined by groups researching physics education.
The weekly lab cycle (3) gives you the opportunity to validate your calculations and/or logically derived expectations against experimental observation. You are required to read the lab manual and come prepared. Sometimes the subject of the labs is somewhat disjoint with that covered in the lectures/discussion. However, this should not distract you from relating lab work to the rest of the learning experience. There is no work to be done on the web for lab.
The homework (4) covering each week's material is due at the beginning of lecture on Wednesdays of the following week for 100% credit. This means you will have the background of reading the text and the experience of lectures, problem session during the discussions and a hands-on lab to guide you in finishing each weekly homework assignment. Homework help is available in Office Hours. Homework finished by the Friday after the due date is given 80% credit. Homework problems are designed to test your understanding of the concepts as well as simple problem-solving skills.
To help you keep track of "what is due when" we have put together a handy Web based daily planner. You can click here, or from the main Physics 247 homepage.
Participation
Success in Physics 247 relies on student engagement in learning the material. We are open to your suggestions and feedback. Clarifying questions during lecture are encouraged, but we would like more open-ended questions covered in the discussion sections. The Pre-Flights before each lecture and the in-class questions are venues for providing us (the instructors) with feedback . The preflights should be taken seriosly: they are an important element of the course since they tell us what you do and don't understand.
Required Background
The main pre-requisite for this class is first semester calculus. Calculus will be used freely and we assume you are not only familiar with it, but also good at it. We are also assuming that you are seriosly considering majoring in physics (perhaps in association with another major).
Required Materials
Written Materials:
- Textbook: Six Ideas That Shaped Physics: Units C: Conservation Laws Constrain Interactions; Unit N: The Laws of Physics are Universal; Unit R: The Laws of Physics are Frame-Independent, Thomas A. Moore. (McGraw-Hill) http://www.physics.pomona.edu/sixideas/
- Laboratory notebook: Spiral bound, preferably with 5 or 6 mm rulings. Bring to your first laboratory.
Calculator:
To help solve homework and exam problems you will need some kind of scientific calculator (i.e. one that can calculate sines, cosines, tangents, find square roots, etc., in addition to having the usual arithmetic functions).
Course Component Details
Lectures:
Lectures are held in 2247 Chamberlin on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 9:55 PM, and you are required to attend and participate. You are required to complete a Web-based lecture "Pre-Flight" before 8am on lecture days (you are encouraged to read the textbook and do the Pre-Flights the day before the lecture, not to leave them to the last moment).
Lab Session:
Lab sessions are held in 4314 Chamberlin and will be run by the TA. The laboratory portion of Physics 247 will consist of eleven 3-hour laboratories, each involving a series of activities, including (i) setting up simple experiments to investigate topics you've studied in class, (ii) making predictions about the outcome of your experiments, (iii) performing measurements of different phenomena, (iv) analyzing your experimental results, and (v) answering questions concerning your results and predictions. The laboratory grade will be determined by the Teaching Assistant, and will in part be based upon
Homework:
Each homework set must be completed by the time indicated. This course will be homework intesive. We will be assigning 4-5 homework problems per chapter, and
will be covering 2-3 chapters per week (using calculus, you can figure out how many problems will be assigned).
Discussion Sessions:
Discussion sections, will be lead by both the professors and the teaching assistant. We will be using the discussion sections to reinforce topics which have already been covered in lecture and develop problem solving skills, through group activities related to more open-ended questions.
Exams:
Two 1 hour exams will be given (See the Course Schedule). Bring a calculator and writing utensils to the exams.
The final exam will be two hours in length and will cover material from the whole semester. You will be told when and where to take your final exam as soon as that information becomes available to the Physics 247 staff.
Grading:
Your final grade for Physics 247 will be based upon your total score on all the components of the course. The total possible score is 1000 points, broken down as follows:
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| Midterm Exams (1 hour each) |
300
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The cutoffs on total points for various course letter grades will be set such that roughly the following percentages are met :
A(15%), AB(15%), B(20%), BC(20%), C(>20%), D(< 10%) F(Hopefully, 0%) .
For some parts of the course the average score is typically very high, while the average score on exams is significantly lower. There is no reason you should not be able to score well on your homework and Pre-Flight assignments. You should also be able to do well on Labs and Discussions. This means that on an absolute scale you cannot offset low examination scores by high homework/pre-flight/lab/discussion grades. On the other hand, you can seriously lower your grade by doing poorly on the homework/pre-flight/lab/discussion. The payoff for doing well on the homework, pre-flights, discussions and labs is your confidence in better understanding of the physics which can be expected to result in higher examination scores.
