FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY

Department of Physics

Syllabus for Physics with Calculus II - Spring 2009

Combined Lecture / Lab (PHY 2049/2049L)

Class Web Site: http://www.fiu.edu/~kramerl/Teaching/2049S09/

Last Update: Friday, January 23, 2009 2:41 PM

Course Description

This course will be a significant departure from the traditional lecture / lab format. It is an integrated lecture / lab with very little formal lecturing (at most 1 hour per week). We will spend class time investigating phenomena, understanding how it fits within the body of physics knowledge, and applying the knowledge. You must be responsive, think, and perform hands-on tasks during class. The lab exercises will be interspersed within the class to provide optimal benefit. You may read and begin understanding the course material before each class, the text is your reference guide for your benefit. As this is a combined course, two grades will be assigned as explained below. This is the second of a two-part introductory general physics course intended for scientists and engineers.We will cover electricity, magnetism, electric circuits, electromagnetic waves, light, and optics.

We will be replicating the way science is done - investigate a phenomena, make conjectures, test conjectures, discuss, revise, test again, etc. With this approach, you will have the opportunity to thoroughly understand the material.

Our course goals are to:

1. Develop a model-centered, constructivist basis of physics.
2. Develop strong laboratory skills using computer-based data acquisition and analysis tools.
3. Develop autonomous learning skills.
4. Learn to think clearly and simply about the physical world.

Course Strategy

Central to the course is developing an ability to think and learn for yourself. There is no simple way to gain this skill, it comes slowly over time and with practice. You must be actively engaged to learn the material. You cannot passively watch your classmates and expect to grasp the material, cognitive science has proven that the mind must interact to learn. You must offer opinions, right or wrong, and compare those to others. You only learn when your are making mistakes (if you have the answer right, then you already know it). Grading is designed to help you in this endeavor: much of the lab portion is graded on effort, on offering right/wrong opinions on your quest to understand. You also have many resources including your group, your friends, class learning assistants, and your professor. Our team is dedicated to helping you learn; however, you are ultimately responsible for your learning. The course is structured with this in mind.

Preparation: You will be expected to read the book prior to class. It would be foolish to think that one can fully grasp physics by reading the material alone, so the class time will be spent clarifying and applying the material. Reading prior to class is common in many classes. One must read assignments in an English Literature class in order to meaningfully discuss them. Not only is reading a reasonable requirement, it makes for much more efficient learning. Students interviewed at other institutions indicated that spending 1-2 hours/week reading and outlining the material saved 4-8 hours per week on homework.

You will also need to read the book to fill in any gaps and/or clarify material learned in class. You are responsible for reading the text as you find necessary.

Classes: Laboratory investigations followed by additional group exercises and discussions will form the basis of this course. Results will be summarized and presented to the class and discussed. Not only must you attend class, but you must also actively engage yourself and your classmates, to succeed. Watching someone else do the work will not build the insight and confidence to do well in homework, on exams, and understand physics.

Collaborative Work: Scientists and engineers work in groups as well as alone. Social interactions are critical to their success. Most good ideas grow out of discussions with colleagues. This course encourages and incorporates collaborative teamwork, a skill that is valued by most employers of scientists, engineers, and technicians. As you work and study together, help your partners to get over confusions, ask each other questions, and critique your group assignments. Everyone benefits from cooperative learning - expressing your ideas so that others can understand them helps clarify them for oneself.

Whiteboarding: Results of labs and group exercises will be summarized on whiteboards and then presented to the class. Discussions and comparisons of the results will follow. Whiteboard presentations should include the relevant facts / details from the lab or exercises, appropriate sketches, graphs (with labels), and other useful points. These whiteboarding presentations will form the crux of the course. The point of the presentation is to firm up your physics knowledge and build confidence in presenting material.

Socratic Method: Much of the class discourse will be through socratic dialogue. In other words, questions will get you to think about the underlying physics. And your questions will often be answered with more questions. The idea is that simply answering your questions may not lead to understanding. Having you link the ideas in your own mind to form the answer is much more useful. These are also used to test your self confidence.

Open Labs : To help you through this course, we will operate Open Labs during the week. Open Labs are times when the classroom will be open for your use and staffed by CHEPREO fellows. You'll have access to lab equipment so you can extend the labs that we do in class or complete missed parts of labs. You can also use the time to clarify questions on the material or homework. Or just hang out and work on your course work. No rules, just use it to your best advantage. Times will be set during the first week. Lack of use may result in the cancellation of hours.

Course Details

Textbook: We will be using University Physics by Young and Freedman, 12th Edition as our textbook. This comes with a student access kit for MasteringPhysics, our online homework system, and tutoring access.

Whiteboarding Presentations: Labs and other exercises will be presented to your classmates via whiteboards and will be graded. Whiteboard preparation and discussion are the critical attributes of the grading. In other words, preparing a whiteboard with proper information (legible, good labels, appropriate graphs / sketches, etc) and then presenting it to the class and responding to the questions will garner the most points. Having the right answers on the whiteboard at the beginning isn't crucial, but understanding the physics by the end of the discssion is crucial.

Homework: There will be graded homework assignments for every chapter we cover. The graded assignments will be done through the MasteringPhysics web-based system. When you purchased your book, you should have gotten an information booklet and registration number. Full credit is assigned for completing 80% of the points in an individual assignment. This allows you to pick and choose a bit (and allows for problem errors in MP). You may also receive 12.5% extra credit for each assignment for completing 90% or more of the points. It certainly behooves you to do as many problems as possible, as they may show up anytime. You are encouraged to discuss the problems among yourselves; however, each of you is responsible for submitting your own individual answers.

Homework will be due roughly one week after we complete the chapter. The system has a cutoff date after which answers are accepted for diminishing value for a limited time (normally 24 hours). You are in charge of your learning, and you must manage your time such that you can complete the assignments on time. To ease this burden, you will be given 5 days of extensions to be used throughout the semester for any assignment. To receive an extension, you must make the request before the assignment is due and include the number of days. In rare cases where you cannot complete assignments due to unforeseen circumstances, you may request a special extension. If approved, you will be required to hand in complete solutions on paper, be graded via sampling of solutions, and receive no extra credit.

There will be two types of homework problems - skill building and end of chapter problems. Skill building exercises provide guidance in doing the problems - hints and other feedback is provided. End of chapter (EOC) problems originate in the back of the book, individually randomized for your assignment. Skill building assignments should help with EOC problems and should be done first. Note that practice skill problems are included with every assignment. You do not receive credit for these problems, but they may help you prepare for other problems.

In order to pass this course, you must practice the techniques you are learning. You must avoid the temptation to cut corners in working homework. Unfortunately, many people discover that this only cheats themselves and often this discovery is made when it it too late to fix the problem. By taking the homework assignments seriously, you reduce the overall difficulty of the course.

Lab Reports: Most units include one or more lab activities. Lab activities are graded, lab reports are the lab worksheets that are filled out during the lab. Credit is generally given for completing the worksheets, points generally are only deducted for not completing the report. The goal is to make predictions as a scientist and then compare with other groups, making errors (and learning the correct interpretation) is an important part of learning. You must be present for lab reports to count. Labs may be made up outside of class (during open labs or at other times).

Worksheets: In addition to homework, worksheet-based assignments will be handed out in class and graded. These often stress physics concepts over numeric problems and are similar to workbook exercises. You will be expected to prepare the worksheets outside of class time. Selected problems will be whiteboarded by groups and discussed in class. Upon completion of the discussions, the worksheets will be handed in for grading. Time is alloted to allow for corrections of the worksheets after class discussions. Worksheets are due after each exam (announced in class). You may turn them in at any time for feedback on your work.

Exams: There will be two in-class exams and the final exam. These exams will consist of both conceptual problems (which tend to be more qualitative in nature, like we discuss in class) and computational problems (which are more quantitative, like the EOC's). Formula sheets will be provided with the exams, as well as, prior to the exams on the class web site. The final exam will consist of two parts - one covering material discussed since the second in-class exam and the second covering all material of the class.

Makeup exams are given only under extreme circumstances. Notification of an unavoidable exam absence must be made prior to the exam (voice mail and email are acceptable). Excused-absence exams will result in adjusting the weighting of the other grade components or administration of a make up exam at the sole discretion of the instructor. Weight adjustments or makeups are given only after receiving a 60 or higher score during an in-class exam.

Class Web Site: Please look to the class web site for additional resources. The site contains this syllabus, problem assignments, homework solutions, and other resources. If you have any suggestions for improvements, don't hesitate to let me know.

Email List: A class mailing list has been established. You are required to maintain contact with the list as official announcements will be made through the list. Please add the list to your spam filter (test messages will be sent the first day). You are encouraged to post questions, answers, jokes, etc to the list. I will monitor the list and provide guidance when appropriate. Don't be surprised to find useful hints floating around the list. You have been subscribed to the list through your FIU email account. You should have received an email with details including the location of the list archive. You may add or change the email account by contacting your instructor. You may also forward email from your FIU account to any other account. Note that the list is a closed list; therefore, all messages must come from a currently subscribed address.

Class Absences: Active participation is critical to the class; however, absences may occur. In general, there are four acceptable excuses for missing class: illness or medical emergency, religious holiday, family emergency, and approved university activity. To receive an excused absence, you must provide a signed paper note explaining why you were out, what work you missed, and what you will do to make it up. Documentation for absences should be stapled to the note. You are not penalized for excused absences. Advance notice is required for religious holidays and approved university activities. Advance notice for other emergencies would be greatly appreciated. Unexcused absences will result in grade adjustments.

Learning Environment: The goal of the course to learn physics. There are many resources to help you learn including your book, your classmates, your instructor, and the class web page. You should take advantage of as many of these as you need in order to learn the material. If, at any point during the course, you feel your performance is slipping, you must immediately seek assistance. Please don't wait until the day before the final to ask for help. I am always available to help, during office hours and non-office hours. Please email or call my office or lab to make sure I am available.

Work (labs, worksheets) should be handed in in a timely manner. For the most benefit, hand in material shortly after we complete the work in class. This allows for feedback that can be very helpful when doing homework and other exercises. Materials worked on before an exam must be handed in within one week of that exam for full credit. You may request extensions, but they need to be requested and granted to be honored.

This is a college course and we expect an appropriate learning environment. Cell phones, beepers, etc are not to be heard in class. Violators will have 10 points deduced from the next exam for each incident. Any form of cheating is unacceptable. The minimum punishment for cheating will be receiving an "F" grade for the course. Further action may be taken including referral to the University Academic Conduct Review Board.

Grading

In order to foster cooperation and collaboration among as many of you as possible, grades will based on an absolute scale. This means that helping others will not jeopardize your grades, it will, most likely, improve your grade as explaining concepts to other develops understanding for yourself. The grading scale for both lecture and lab sections is:

An F0 will be assigned to students who both earn a failing grade based on course standards and who fail to complete at least 60% of the course requirements or fail to attend at least 60% of class sessions. An F0 equals zero grade points per credit hour and is a permanent grade.

The breakdown of components for the lecture section is:

The breakdown of components for the lab section is:

Please note that 30% of your grade is derived from non-exam work. This means you have a great deal of control over your grade. Also note that 15% of the grade originates in class work. It is in your best interest to attend class and actively participate. If you make the effort on the homework and classroom exercises, you receive credit for the work and are better prepared to perform well on exams.

Homework: Each assignment will typically contain 10-15 problems worth 1-5 points each. Getting 80% of the points in an assignment will result in a 100% score, with 12.5% extra credit for attaining 90% or more of the assignment points. The points can be obtained in any manner using the values of the various problems.

We will be using University Physics by Young and Freedman, 12th Edition. Below are the chapter sections we should cover during each week of the semester. Some sections will be covered in greater depth than others. It is important to read the sections prior to each class.

Class Schedule*: 

*subject to change

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