Physics 140 Spring 2009

Final Exam is Thurs May 7 at 8AM to 11 am in VD211

Welcome to The Greenhouse Effect. We will meet Mondays and Wednesdays during 5th period (2:50 pm to 4:10 pm) in MU-211. We will discuss the effect generally known as "Global Warming" or "Climate Change". The goal of this class is to give students a quantitative grasp of the science behind the issues, and equip them to perform the simple calculations required.
A lot of arguments that get presented in the media and public policy arguments tend to be spurious and take advantage of the general public's ignorance of basic science and lack of numerical ability. Most members of the media fall into this category as well.

Who should be in this class:

This class is aimed at students who are NOT science and engineering majors, but would like to understand the concepts beyond the media sound bites. We will spend some time discussing basic concepts like temperature, energy, power, and the units in which they are measured.
I would urge students with a technical background to talk to me, there are other resources that delve deeper into the thermodynamics, chemistry, and biology of the topic than we will in this class.

Syllabus:

There is a syllabus for this class. We may deviate from it occasionally, but the two in-class exams and the final exam will be held as shown.

Text:

The main text for the course is "The Rough Guide to Climate Change," by Robert Henson (2006). It should be available at the Rutgers bookstore; it can also be found at online book merchants such as Amazon.com and Buy.com. The text does an adequate job of covering the topic of global warming, but does not establish the basic concepts well enough (no text does, really). I will be posting other notes, readings from websites etc. as required.

Readings

Extra Reading
Lectures will show up here
Here is the Carbon Footprint for the class.

Grading:

There will be homework, two in-class exams, and a final exam. These will count 10%, 50%, 40% resepectively (ie, each in-class exam will be worth 25% of your grade). There is an online gradebook here

Homeworks:

There will be homework assigned and collected every two weeks. The homework assignments are here. Homework solutions will be posted here . The homework grader is Sanjay Arora: srarora AT physics.rutgers.edu

Old Exams

Here are exams from previous years . Note: I will not have questions that require written answers
Solutions for exams will be provided during in-class review sessions.

Exam Solutions

Exam 1 (Feb 25, 2009) Solutions - are here .
Note: Problem 4 had a typo and was not counted.
The average score on the exam was 75.2% (about 15 out of 20 correct).
The mistakes were spread all over, problems 3 and 12 were the only ones with more incorrect answers than correct ones.

Attendance

Please attend class. There will be material covered in lectures that may not show up in notes or supplementary reading.

Office Hours

I will be in my office on Fridays, 10 am to noon, feel free to drop by (Serin West, room 324 on Busch Campus). Send email before coming, if it's a minor problem we may be able to clear it up.

Students with Disabilities

Please consult me as early as possible if you have a disability that might interfere with an optimal learning experience.
Also, please consult the website on disabilities . The University has coordinators for students with disabilities.

Amit &

Last modified: Wed Apr 29 16:37:45 EDT 2009