Lectures: MWF, 11:45 -- 12:35, Dental School 100
Professor: Katherine Benson
Rollins Research 1009, phone 7-4083, e-mail benson@physics.emory.edu
Texts: Cutnell & Johnson, 5th edition (required)
Physics 141 - 142 Laboratory Manual, 10th edition (required)
Comella, Cutnell & Johnson, Student Solutions Manual (recommended)
Help Session: Tuesday 7:30 - 9:00 pm, Dental School 100
Office Hours: Thursday 1:00 - 3:00 pm
Friday 1:00 - 3:00 pm
Grading:
There will be four unit tests and one comprehensive final exam,
as noted on your schedule. Unit tests will contain both a conceptual
multiple choice and a quantitative free response section. To allow
ample study and review time, the last unit test will occur in the
first hour of our final exam period. A comprehensive 1-hour final
exam, all multiple choice testing concepts and light calculation, will
follow.
Students will have access to all homework solutions and a review session before all exams. Usually I will make available a sample exam with written solutions as well.
Doing homework is the prime learning activity of the course, and
is expected to keep your understanding current with the lecture, as
well as preparing you for the exams. Its importance and immediacy is
such that 1) no homework will be accepted late without prior
arrangement; 2) solutions will be posted online for your review when
homework is due; and 3) it comprises 25% of your grade.
Homework will have three components, each equally weighted in your homework grade. The first is Conceptual, involving your response to MCAT-style paragraph problems. These explore a situation and its underlying physics concepts through a series of linked multiple choice questions, at a conceptual and light computational level. The remaining components are Quantitative, and involve solution of assigned physics problems from your text. In the Quantitative I component, you solve assigned problems and submit your final (multiple choice) answers. It is likely that this homework component will be online, allowing you to learn through multiple attempts with feedback before submitting your final responses. (Final approval for our pilot use of this online resource is still pending.) In the Quantitative II component, you will be graded not just on your ability to produce correct answers, but to write up your solutions in a coherent, well-justified form, indicating which principles and equations apply to the problem situation, with any needed justification, and deriving your answer, showing the derivation of units, and evaluating in terms of numeric quantities only in the last step. This triad of homework components is meant to help you learn the basic concepts and strategies underlying the material; to successfully solve problems on your own; and to demonstrate that you can think critically in organizing a problem solution and communicate your mastery of that solution to others. Mastery of this set of skills is solid preparation for the course exams and physics MCAT.
Problem sets will be assigned weekly. The conceptual component will ordinarily be due Wednesday mornings and the quantitive components Friday afternoons. For each homework, I will post review problems with solutions, of both conceptual and quantitative type, to guide you in applying the course material to the homeworks. Tuesday evening help sessions will also help you clarify your understanding, practice problem-solving skills, and get feedback on any confusions you have about the homework. Thursday and Friday office hours will further clarify any issues that arise as you attempt the quantitative problems.
You are welcome to discuss problems, and work together on paper, blackboards, or whiteboards, with your colleagues and with me during help sessions, office hours, and your own study groups. You are, however, honor code bound to work through, write up, and submit any solutions yourself.
See lab handout. All students must complete the Physics 141 lab
with a passing grade; the lab grade comprises 17% of your course
grade.
Course resources are available on the web, at
|http://www.emory.edu/PHYSICS/Faculty/Benson/141/141.html| They
include any last-minute course announcements, all handouts, and
solutions to all homework and exams (both review and assigned). Also
included will be pointers to any other online resources that become
available to our section.
This course is centrally graded, to insure uniformity of the grade distribution across sections. You will receive grades within our section throughout the semester; however, overall course medians will be adjusted at the end, to establish a standard median grade for all sections. Typically this means that median grades will remain low throughout the semester (75 to 80to a centrally agreed median at a course-wide grading meeting on December 20. This means that I cannot commit to any scheme for curving grades, or final grade assignment, before December 21.
The honor code remains in force for all work you submit in this course, homework and exams. Both homework and exams are designed to detect and discourage cheating, to assure the integrity of grading for the vast majority of the class who submit their own work. Unfortunately, this course does typically generate cases of cheating. Any suspected instances of cheating always go before the Honors Council, without exception, and penalties typically include both failure of the course element involved, and notation of the cheating infraction on the student's academic record, for at least one year. Student cheating is neither tolerated, nor lightly punished, in this course.
This document was generated using the LaTeX2HTML translator Version 96.1 (Feb 5, 1996) Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, Nikos Drakos, Computer Based Learning Unit, University of Leeds.
The command line arguments were:
latex2html -split 0 syllabus.
The translation was initiated by Katherine Benson on Wed Sep 5 10:04:57 EDT 2001