Physics 124, Spring 2012
Students are responsible for all information contained on this page!
Corequisite
Math 152 (01:640:152)
Web Site
The web site for Physics 124 is http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/ugrad/124/. All announcements will appear there as well as in a lecture.
Staff
For the list of teaching staff, with office, telephone, email, picture information, click here. Students from any section are welcome at the office hour of any instructor. The course supervisor is Prof. G. Blumberg (course design, lectures, iclickers), the course administrator is Prof. H. Kojima (minilabs, exams, and Mastering Physics) and the course assistant is P. Khromov(online gradebook, iClickers, homework solutions, grading exams).
Textbook
Required: Young and Freedman: "University Physics", Volume I, 13th edition, Pearson/AddisonWesley, ISBN-13: 978-0-321-73338-2, ISBN-10: 0-321-73338-X.
Registration Problems
Students with registration questions or problems should consult Ms. Jacobs in Serin Lab, Room 201W, or call her at (732) 445-2511, or write an e-mail letter to sjacobs (at) physics (dot) rutgers (dot) edu.
Lectures and iClickers
Two equivalent lectures will be given in the Physics Lecture Hall,
We expect that you will be able to come to whichever lecture you find is more convenient. However, if too many people come to one of the lectures, this policy will be changed.
Information about the course will be announced in lectures, and will be posted on the course web page.
ICLICKERS: Student iClicker units will be used to collect answers to questions posed during lecture. Each student needs to purchase an iClickers unit at Rutgers Bookstore - if you have one from last term you should be able to reuse it. You must register your iClicker before the first lecture. To do so, once you have your iClicker unit, please follow the instructions on the course website at the iClickers web page
Workshops, Quizzes, Minilabs
Your registration for this course includes an assignment to an 80-minute workshop section that meets once a week (on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, see list) starting Tuesday, 24 January (no meetings in the first week of term), in Serin 227 or as posted at the Western entrance to Serin, nearest Allison Road.
Workshops will generally consist of:
QUIZZES: A short quiz based on the lecture materials on Friday just prior to the workshop week and on similar questions as those assigned that are due on Thursday during the week of workshop will be administered in each workshop. The quiz will be graded by your workshop instructor and returned at the next workshop meeting. The quiz will take 10-15 mins and occur after the homework discussion and before the minilab. Each quiz will be worth 10 points maximum.
MINILABS: Most weeks (see schedule ) a minilab will be done during part of the session. The purpose of the minilab is to give you some familiarity with a relevant physics concept from the week's material. The minilab uses simple equipment and is not intended to teach laboratory techniques. The handout for each minilab is provided in the schedule. You are urged to study the minilab before coming to the workshop. You will work in groups and hand in a group lab report before you leave. The report will be graded, and it is important that you do not miss a minilab. Bring a calculator to your workshop session! The minilab report will be worth a maximum of 5 points.
ABSENCES: There will be no makeup opportunities for missed minilab and quiz grades, but the lowest two combined quiz+minilab scores will be dropped. This is to allow for illness, conflicts, religious holidays etc. If you have more than two absences, all for verifiable good reasons, you may attend another workshop section during the same week with the permission of the course administrator, Prof. Kojima. You must tell your regular instructor and ask for the grade to be transferred to him or her.
GRADING STANDARDS: At the end of the semester we will use the average exam performance of each instructor's students to adjust for instructor differences in grading standards.
Homework
Homework is done through
an on-line system, Mastering Physics.
In order to register for Mastering Physics, you must log in to the website
(www.masteringphysics.com)
and choose the correct textbook (Young/Freedman University Physics
13e) and then register as a new user. Use your eden email name and
register using the access code included with your textbook. The
course ID for this course is P124S2012.
You will generally have one assignment due Thursday night, every week. Your work on the problems and your grade are recorded online by Mastering Physics web site automatically.
The schedule shows the assignments. The homework problems may be used as a basis for lecture iClicker questions, workshop quizzes, or exam questions, so you should try to understand them. To find the actual problems (P) in the assignment, you must log on to Mastering Physics, and click on "assignment list" in the left hand column. Tutorial problems generally found at the beginning of the assignment may be helpful in completing the assignment. The regular problems in the assignment generally are based on the problems in your textbook, but have numerical values for the various variables that are different from the corresponding problem in the text; these numbers vary from student to student. The assignments are generally available for at least one week before being due as shown in the homework schedule. Note that it is impossible to work on the homework assignment after the deadline has passed; homework solutions are posted to the class schedule page shortly after the dealine. There is no makeup.
It is very important that you WORK ALL THE HOMEWORK and bring questions about them to the workshop. You are strongly encouraged to participate in the discussion of problems and ask questions about aspects that you have not completely mastered. The weekly quizzes are often very similar to homework problems.
Other Information
HOW TO STUDY FOR THIS COURSE: From experience we know that, in order to be successful in this class, consistent weekly effort is required on your part. Reading the material and thinking it makes sense is easy, assimilating it so that you really understand it and can apply it is difficult. It helps to think about it, to see it several different ways, to discuss it with your classmates, and to try to explain to them how you understand it. Try to study with friends. Through discussions with others, you will understand the material in a deeper way. Do not hesitate to contact your instructors, but do this as early as possible. Most things we can help you with, if we know about them early, but there is often little we can do if you wait until a few days before the final. Study example solved problems / old test problems, and then see if you can do similar problems by yourself. Use only a cheat sheet to help you, like on the exam. Use the end of chapter material as a guide to your cheat sheet. The exam problems generally have to be shorter and simpler than the homework problems, so once you can do the homework and old exams by yourself, you should do well on the exam.
DISCUSSIONS WITH YOUR FRIENDS: You are strongly encouraged to form your own informal study groups. The best way is to form a group of 3-4 people and get together at a regular time once a week to thrash out your difficulties with homework problems, reading, etc. It should be clearly understood, however, that the submitted homework should be, in the end, done by yourself. You will know you are well prepared for the exams if you can do problems by yourself.
ADDITIONAL MATERIALS: Each week we will post homework solutions on the course schedule page, shortly after the homework is due. As a result, there is no makeup for homework that is not completed on time. The Math and Science Learning Center (MSLC) on Busch and on Douglass and the various campus computer hubs have computer workstations with internet access. Students who need help in our course are strongly encouraged to see our recitation instructors. Their office hours are listed in the Instructors link in our course web page. In addition, free tutoring is available from Rutgers University Learning Centers. For more details, consult the MSLC webpage, or visit the MSLC (Busch Campus, ARC building, 3rd floor) in person.
PHYSICS STUDY GROUPS:
| M 6:40-8:00 | ARC 326 |
| M 8:10-9:30 | ARC 324 |
| T 5:00-6:20 | ARC 326 |
| T 6:40-8:00 | ARC 328 |
| T 8:10-9:30 | ARC 324 |
| W 5:00-6:20 | ARC 309 |
| W 6:40-8:00 | ARC 326 |
| W 6:40-8:00 | ARC 333 |
| TH 5:00-6:20 | ARC 326 |
| TH 6:40-8:00 | ARC 328 |
| TH 6:40-8:00 | ARC 326 |
| TH 8:10-9:30 | ARC 328 |
| F 1:40-3:00 | ARC 326 |
Free drop-in tutoring is available in ARC332 on Monday Tuesday and Wednesday evenings at the Rutgers Learning Center. The schedule is shown in the link below. Ignore the course numbers in the schedule. Tutors are availble to help students in physics 124. Take advantage of this opportunity.
http://rlc-chat.rutgers.edu/scheduling/group/group_signup.php?campus='Busch'&page=new2
Examinations
The table below gives times for the two common hour (CH) examinations and the three-hour final examination in this course. The CH exams will be conducted in several locations, and students are assigned to locations alphabetically. A label with your name on it will be pasted on one of the several versions of the exam and sent to the appropriate location. If you go to the wrong location, you will not find your exam. The times for the make up exams will be announced later.
|
Exam |
Date and Time |
|---|---|
|
CH1 |
Monday, February 20 |
|
CH2 |
Monday, April 2 |
|
Final |
Tuesday,
May 8 |
|
Make Up Exams |
To be determined |
All exams will be multiple choice and closed-book. For each Common Hour Exam, you may bring with you a single "cheat sheet", one and only one 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of paper (OK to use both sides) on which you may write any formula or note that might be helpful to you during the exam. On the final exam you may bring two sheets. The numerical values of relevant constants will be provided to you. The hourly exams are expected to have 15 questions; the final is expected to have 30 questions. You should certainly bring a calculator to the exams (with no stored course information), as well as pencils for the computer forms. Communication devices of any kind will not be allowed. In particular, cell phones must be turned off and placed in a bag (or similar) so that they can not be seen by you or by anyone else. Failure to obey this rule will be considered as cheating.
To help you in studying for exams, this Physics 124 web site contains practice exams, with solutions, for each of the CH and final exams. In addition, you can consult any of the course instructors either during their office hours or by appointment or by email.
Makeup Exams
Exam locations and dates will be announced later. Professor Kojima needs a written note explaining your reason for missing the exam, along with written supporting evidence like a note from the health service, or the name of the conflicting course, the instructor's name, and the time of the conflicting class/exam. At the beginning of the semester, check the exam and class schedules of your other courses for conflicts with Physics 124 exams. If you have a conflict with one or more of our exams, contact Prof. Blumberg or Prof. Kojima right away. The makeup exams are scheduled based on the students who cannot attend the regular exam.
Grade Computation
| Item | Weight | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Common Hour Exam I | 15% | |
| Common Hour Exam II | 15% | |
| Final Exam | 30% | |
| Workshop Quizzes | 10% | 13 quizzes, two lowest scores dropped |
| Workshop Labs | 10% | 9 labs, two lowest scores dropped |
| home work |
20% | Mastering Physics, 12 assignments, one lowest score will be dropped |
| total |
100% | |
| icliker (extra credit) |
15% |
for correct answers to iclicker questions during lectures |
For ``weekly'' assignments, your two lowest grades will be dropped in working out the final class grades. This policy is intended to account for illness, religious holidays, and approved conflicting activities. If you expect to miss more than two assignments due to such conflicts, please contact your recitation instructor as soon as possible.
Academic Integrity
Please review the Rutgers Policy on Academic Integrity for Undergraduate and Graduate Students. As this document makes clear, cheating can take many forms, none of which are acceptable. This includes (but is not limited to):
However, we do encourage certain activities, such as
Ultimately, cheating in any form will not work in your favor: you will not learn the material for yourself. This can have only a deleterious effect on your own performance in classes and in the world at large. Don't do it!
Email to Instructors
The usual rules of punctuation, spelling, grammar, style and courtesy apply to electronic mail.
Please use your eden email account. We will communicate with you exclusively through your Rutgers e-mail account. Failure on your part to check that account is not an acceptable excuse.
Students with Disabilities
If you have a disability, you are urged to speak to Professor Gilman early in the semester to make the necessary arrangements to support a successful learning experience. Also, you must arrange for Professor Blumberg to receive a Letter of Accommodation from the Office of Disability Services. For more information, see here.
Last updated December, 2011