Dr. Viv s PHY 212 : University Physics II (Spring 2017-2018 Semester) Basic Information: Course website: http://people.rit.edu/vxnsps/viv.html Note that I will not be using the MyCourses shell for this course except to send out mass e-mail announcements, and for me and the TA to update the Gradebook. Instructor: Dr. Vivek Narayanan (aka DR. VIV) Email: vxnsps@rit.edu Office: HLC (14)-2331 (Hugh L. Carey building); phone 585-475-5592, no voicemail. Office Hours: Tuesday 2:00 PM 3:50 PM: BATES STUDY CENTER (08-1200 GOSNELL) Thursday 2:00 PM 3:50 PM: BATES STUDY CENTER (08-1200 GOSNELL) Thursday 4:00 PM 5:50 PM---ON MIDTERM EXAM WEEKS 5, 9, 13 ONLY: HLC(14)-2331; followed by midterm exam at TBA location from 7:00 PM 8:20 PM Additional office hour meetings at my regular office by prior e-mail appointment Teaching Assistant: Section 14: Meaghann Stoelting mls6495@rit.edu Section 08: Conner Brown cab2064@rit.edu Class Times: Section 14: MWF 12:20 PM 2:20 PM, GOS 3154 Section 08: MWF 2:30 PM 4:30 PM, GOS 3154 Exam Times: Three mid-term exams on Thursdays 15 th Feb (week 5), 22 nd Mar(week 9), 19 th Apr (week 13), from 7:00 PM-8:20 PM, location TBA; Final exam Friday May the 4 th, 2:45 PM -- 4:45 PM, LBR-A205 Lab make-up: Thursday 4:00-7:00 PM, GOS-3125; TA: Frank Schooner; Week 2 (1/25)---Week 13 (4/19) [no make-up possible on Week 14]
Grading: Quizzes (7%): One conceptual quiz will be given every Friday during the first 15 minutes of class, followed by discussion, another 15 minutes. Quizzes will be in a multiple choice format. Every quiz will have seven questions of which 5 will be scored. (So, it is possible to score a grade of 7 out of 5.) Quizzes are patterned after the practice quizzes on the course website (see top line in Basic Information above for the course webpage URL). A 3 X 5 index card with 5 formulas are allowed per quiz, but no calculator may be used. The lowest TWO quiz scores shall be dropped from grade considerations. Grading will be done by the TA. Online Homework (7%): 14 assignments on Expert TA plus an optional, extra credit assignment. HW will appear each Tuesday starting with week 1. Each HW will be due 11:59 PM Tuesday of weeks 2-15. Each assignment will have 6 questions, graduated from really easy to not that easy. There is a small (1%) penalty for accessing a hint, but no penalty for requesting feedback. You lose 10% for being late each day past the deadline, for a maximum penalty of 50%. If you are stuck, bring your work done thus far written out neatly in a journal in order to properly and efficiently seek help during office hours. None of the assignment scores will be dropped. The extra credit assignment is pretty tough, and will feature one problem each week added to it on a rolling basis, with end of the course as deadline. (See item 1 under required materials to see how online HW is accessed.) Grading will be done automatically (i.e., a computer). If you have any quarrels with the computer, come see me to adjust your points. Paper Homework (6%): Every Friday, a paper homework with TWO questions will be handed to you, either as a variation of a problem from the activities manual, or a problem created by the instructor. Hints will be provided as necessary on the question sheet itself. This paper HW will be due on Friday, beginning of class, with model solutions appearing Friday evening on the course website. Study the POW (problem of the week) on the website before attempting the paper HW. POWs will appear on the website each Friday. Answer the paper HW using the same format, and the level of detail as in the POWs. This HW could be a group effort, maximum group size is 3---although individual efforts are fine too. The idea behind the paper homework is to get you used to presenting your work properly so that you do well when you see short and long format problems in tests and exams. The paper HW will be graded on a four tier grading system, with possible # (5 points), (4 points), (3 points), or 0 points per problem. Also, paper HW may sometimes have a part that is not too easy---doing this will earn a smiley face sticker. Each sticker will be worth an additional point. The lowest TWO paper HW scores shall be dropped from grade considerations. If you need to make up a paper HW assignment (allowed only for medical illness or similar emergencies) after its solution has appeared on the course website, you may choose a problem of the same difficulty and the same topic from a suitable textbook, any online source, or even make up one of your own, and submit that solved problem. The problem must be copied in full form from the source, or stated in full, referencing the source. Grading will be done by the Instructor. A possible grade could look like # (4+5+1 = 10)
Workshop: Labs (10%): Report write-ups are due one week after performance of the lab, at class beginning. Any lab submission that occurs afterward (with the exception of make-up labs) will be scored 20% down. Lab make-ups along with reports are due no later than two weeks of the lab performance. The nature of each lab report will differ based on instructions issued in class at the time of the lab. When doing make-up labs, please be sure to look at my online notes to see if I have made modifications or additions to the suggested activities in the Activities Manual. The lab TA during the make-up lab sessions will not know about these modifications! There are only a handful of labs in this course, and they all have different number of points, so NONE of the lab scores will be dropped. Grading for all but the final lab will be done by the TA, using suggested rubric by the Instructor. I ll grade the final lab. Midterm exams (15% x 3): There will be three midterm exams on Thursday evenings, from 7:00-8:20 PM of academic weeks 5, 9, and 13. Exam venue and syllabus information will be given to you no later than Fridays of weeks 4, 8, and 12. All exams are common to all sections of the course. However, midterm exams will be individually graded by each Instructor using a common rubric that will be adhered to strictly by all Instructors to keep grading uniform across sections. Note that the second midterm exam occurs right after Spring Break week (which occurs between academic weeks 8 and 9). Exam make-ups: It is possible to make up midterm exams. Just fill out the exam make-up form (available by request) and submit to Ms. Cynthia Drake (Cindy) of building 76 (Carlson). She will make the initial determination, and pass the form on to the department chair, who will relay to me and the student the final decision. Time and place of the make-up exam shall be decided by the instructor and the student on departmental approval. Final exam (25%): Comprehensive, commonly set final exam in multiple choice format, with common grading. Per physics departmental policy, the final exam percentage score will replace, if it is advantageous to you, the lowest percentage score of a midterm exam. Your final will be on Star Wars day (May the fourth ), from 2:45-4:45 PM. Plan to be in town, as there will not be a make-up for the final exam. If you were to miss the final exam but have all other components in place, you could discuss the possibility of receiving a grade of Incomplete on the course---although be forewarned that the procedure is complicated and depends on your performance thus far. In other words, an Incomplete is not a means for bailing out of a course due to poor performance beyond the last date for dropping a course. Incompletes are given in only the rarest of circumstances. Extra Credit policy: There are extra credit opportunities arising from the two extra questions in every quiz, the (optional) online extra credit assignment, smiley faces in paper assignments, some lab extensions or modifications to regular labs. The goal of these extra credit possibilities is to enable students to get as many points as possible outside of the tests and exams, and learn physics at the same time! If a student does every single one of them and scores full, he or she could earn as much as 33/30. In order to ensure other
sections are not at disadvantage, I will place a cap of 30% on the combined scores of Quiz, Homework (online + paper), and labs. You may do extra credit over and above this, but it will not increase your grade further than 30%. Since as a student you have other courses to study, decide if it is worth your while to do too many of these extra credit parts. Do not expect extra credit to help you with a poor midterm exam performance! The only reprieve available there is the replacement policy of one of the midterm exams by the final exam. Nor will doing more than the necessary extra credit influence me in assigning letter grades. Letter Grades: 100--90% A-type (ranges from A to A-); 89--80% B-type (ranges from B+ to B-); 79--70% C-type (ranges from C+ to C-); 69--60% D; 59--0% F These cutoffs indicate what is needed to earn one of the letter grades within each type. Finer-grained divisions in the A, B, and C ranges will only be determined after a careful analysis by all the professors at the end of the semester. Gradebook: At any given time, you may calculate your grade in this course using information in the MyCourses Gradebook (this shall be the only way in which I shall be using MyCourses). Your TA will grade and enter quiz and lab scores, and I ll grade and enter the paper HW and exam scores, and upload the automatically calculated online Expert TA homework score ONCE (at the end of the course, during exam week). Grade adjustments, dropping of lowest scores, and replacements of lowest midterm exam by the final exam shall be done using the gradebook during the exam week, and you will be sent e-mail announcements asking you to check that the various grades that you received have been accurately entered. For labs and quizzes, bring any errors and discrepancies in grade entry to both my and the TA s attention. E-mailing just one of us inevitably will cause delays in addressing the problem. For HW and exam grade entry errors, it is sufficient to e-mail only me. Required/ Recommended Materials: 1. Expert TA HW software must be purchased upon following the link below http://goeta.link/usu34ny-a10e16-1gz 2. University Physics II Activities Manual packet (shrink-wrapped and 3-hole-punched from Barnes and Noble @ RIT bookstore). This manual shall be extensively used in class for everything from practice problems to lab activities. Buy sooner rather than later! Keep a file binder for this and to add handouts and other material I hand out to you as the course progresses. (Buy a 3-hole punch for easy filing.) 3. (Strongly Recommended) Some sort of calculus based physics textbook, old editions are available for the price of a coffee in most used textbook stores! Or for that matter your own parents books when and if they did engineering! The physics we are going to learn in this course has not changed much in the last 200 or so years. Only the fancy technology and exciting new applications of the old physics have
changed. I personally would not do this course without some sort of cellulose support system, or at least an online source like an e-book or a free download. I have no faith in the accuracy of online websites such as hyperphysics so I would not recommend them as a primary resource. There is absolutely no peer review process and anybody can edit those websites. At the same time, my notes alone will not be enough. Examples of great books: Resnick and Halliday (early editions, before the 8 th ), Young and Freedman (editions before the 14 th ), Nelkon and Parker (British---my favorite!), etc. Topics covered will be from chapters 21-36 of Young and Freedman 12 th edition (I am using this as reference because it happens to be near me) covering electricity, magnetism and optics. Here is a table of contents listing; you will find the corresponding chapters from any other book you may choose. Ch. 21: Electric Charge and Electric Field [week 01, 02] Ch. 22: Gauss s Law [week 03] Ch. 23: Electric Potential [week 04] Ch. 24: Capacitance and Dielectrics [week 05] Ch. 25: Current, Resistance, and Electromotive Force [week 06] Ch. 26: Direct-current Circuits [week 07] Ch. 27: Magnetic Field and Magnetic Forces [week 08] Ch. 28: Sources of Magnetic Field [week 09] Ch. 29: Electromagnetic Induction [week 10] Ch. 30: Inductance [week 11] Ch. 32: Electromagnetic Waves [week 11-12] Ch. 33: The Nature and Propagation of Light [week 12] Ch. 34: Geometric Optics and Optical Instruments [week 12] Ch. 35: Interference [week 13] Ch. 36: Diffraction [week 14] Policies: 1. No food and drink in class. You may step outside and stand by the door as you consume (nonalcoholic) beverages. 2. A break will be given for exactly 5 minutes 55 minutes into the class. Class will resume promptly after the 5 minute break. Please do not talk loudly in corridors because other classes might still be in session during your break time! 3. Cell phone use in class will not be permitted for texting, social media, etc. However, you are allowed to use your device as a level, stopwatch, or for other lab measurement purposes, such as recording data. RIT will not assume any responsibility for lab use of your cellphone that results in damage or destruction (such as dropping it from a great height to determine acceleration due to gravity). Cellphones are not to be used during exams for any reason. 4. Cheating in weekly quizzes (except in the collaborative quizzes 5, 9, & 13) and in exams will lead to various disciplinary proceedings including being expelled from RIT. Homework and labs may be done
collaboratively; in fact you are encouraged to form study groups for homework and to prepare for exams. 5. Lab reports are done in groups of not more than 3 and no fewer than 2. Each person will contribute to the overall report. Any exceptions are to be reported to me or the TA and scores shall be adjusted to reflect lack of work by a group member. 6. Prepare to spend significant amount of time outside of class (multiply class time by a factor of at least 1.5) to digest theory material from the textbook, to attempt homework, to prepare lab reports, and to study for quizzes and exams. Enjoy the course! We will follow a novel blend of theory, guided and mentored practice problems with frequent discussion, and labs closely integrated to the lesson plan. Such a studio workshop approach has been demonstrated to be more effective at delivering instruction than the traditionally separated large lecture, smaller discussion sessions, and independent laboratory components of the larger universities.