Physics 121
will have three sections with different lecture periods: MWF 8:30-9:25 (section
3), 10:20-11:15 (section 2), and 3:25-4:20 (section 1). The room will
accommodate only a certain number of students, and we cannot register any more
into a filled section. At present, the 10:20 lecture is filled to
capacity, but there is plenty of room in the other two.
Your clicker will only work in the section
in which you are registered.
Prof. Matthew Dawber, Physics
B105, 632-4978. Matthew.Dawber (at)
stonybrook.edu
Prof. Roderich Engelmann, Physics
D106, 632-8087. Roderich.Engelmann (at)
stonybrook.edu
Prof. Peter Stephens, Physics B134, 632-8156.
Peter.Stephens (at) stonybrook.edu
Of course, for the actual email addresses, substitute @ for
(at).
Each of the instructors will
give all of the lectures for 1/3 of the semester.
Most of the course
administration will be done via Blackboard. Please make sure that you have access to
your Stony Brook Blackboard account, that this course is listed therein (by the
week before classes start), and that the email address listed in your Blackboard
account is one that you monitor.
You have to register your "clicker" via Blackboard; see below.
The prerequisites are MAT 125,
131, 141, or AMS 151 and CHE 132 or 142. Note that this is a prerequisite,
not a corequisite. It is a terrible mistake to
take physics without the needed math background; math is the language of
physics, and you will use it every day. It is our long and sad experience
that people who take physics courses without the necessary math background
generally do very poorly - do yourself a favor and make sure that your math is
adequate.
Your first assignment Ch2_1 is due Friday
9/5 2
hours after your class ends.
Your first class for credit with “clicker” is
Friday 9/5.
The lab is mandatory. There
are ten lab sessions. You must register for a lab in Physics 123.
Your grade for the "lecture" part of the course and for the lab will be
the same. All ten lab grades count; if you skip one, your grade will
suffer. There will be several make-up lab times scheduled through the
semester, when you can make up the lab that you have missed. No excuse is
required to do a makeup lab -- just come in and do it. More details about
the labs are in the syllabus below.
There is a rigorous cap of 30
students in each lab which will not be exceeded. If you cannot get the lab
you want, we suggest that you register for an open lab and hope to rearrange
with a section switch once classes start. But you must attend the lab for
which you are registered until you have made such a switch.
The workshop (meets during the
so-called lecture time) will be an interactive REVIEW of the material that you
have studied from the CD. Interactive in the sense that
every student has a response pad (commonly called a "clicker", although they do
not click) to answer quizzes that will be posed during the workshop.
Your workshop clicker score is 10% of your grade.
The bookstore sells clickers.
Whether you buy one new, reuse one from a previous semester, or find one
that fell off a truck, you need to register it through Blackboard. See the
Blackboard Course Information: “Registering CPS in Blackboard”. The first generation clickers will
work just fine, although there is a second generation which is slightly more
convenient because you don't have to "join" the session at the beginning of the
workshop. There have been complaints about the reliability of clickers
that have been in use for several semesters. Your clicker will only work in the
lecture section for which you are registered.
The course CD contains all of
the lectures, which you will watch at your convenience, as many times as you
want, as well as the class quizzes (homework), practice exams, and a wealth of
other material. For Instructions to purchase it see the Blackboard Course
Information: “Purchase of
the CD”. Lectures
will be available free of charge on the web for the first 2 weeks, to allow
everybody plenty of time to obtain the course CD.
There is no required textbook;
the lectures and problems on the CD are self-contained. However, if you
want a second source, you can get College Physics (8th ed.) by Young and
Geller (Pearson, Addison Wesley, 2007). That book is also linked to an
"adaptive-learning online tutorial and assessment system" called MasteringPhysicsTM. That gives you access
to a wealth of supplementary problems, and automated help with solving them.
The access code is valid for one year, and will be usable in Physics 122,
as will the textbook. There are three possible paths: (1) buy the
book and student access kit at the bookstore (we think it costs $127.75), (2)
online e-book and access code for $79.50, or (3) access code only for $44.50.
(Note that if you buy the access code now, and want the book later, you
don't get a discount for access code already purchased.) Access code is
available at http://session.masteringphysics.com/myct?productID=yg8.
NOTE that the supplementary text and access to problems are purely for
your enrichment if you decide to use them. There is no extra credit
applicable to your course grade if you do homework problems from that text.
None!
The scheduled course meetings are not
lectures, but rather workshops, held at the scheduled time of your
section of the lecture.
There are quizzes before every
class meeting, starting Friday September 5. OK - they are actually due 2
hours after the end of each class, but it would be foolish to wait until then to
do them. The quizzes are on your course CD, but to submit solutions for
credit, you have to log in via Blackboard to an on-campus server running Maple
TA software.
You come to the workshop prepared
because you have viewed the lecture on the CD and completed the quiz on the CD
and Blackboard. The workshop will be used to review material, and for
quizzes based on eInstruction response pads
("clickers", although they don't actually click). Your class participation
using the response pads counts for a total of 10% of your grade. You are
responsible for having a functioning response pad. If you have trouble
with your clicker in the workshop, see the lecturer immediately afterward, and,
if justified, he will exempt you from the workshop just past. Such
exemptions are only granted immediately after the workshop. The signal
from your clicker will only be received in the section for which you are
registered, so you must attend that one in order to receive credit for
participation.
During the workshop, when you are
working on one of the quizzes, you may discuss the problem quietly with
your immediate neighbors. This is intended to help you understand the problem
and solve it. "The answer is C" is not the kind of discussion intended
here -- you deprive yourself of the opportunity to learn and prepare yourself
for the exams. One person operating two clickers is clear academic
dishonesty, and will result in a course grade of F for the owners of both
clickers. Really.
Bring a calculator to the
workshop. It should be able to do trig functions, square root, log,
exponential notation. You will also need it for the exams. Your
calculator is an important tool for the course, and you should be familiar with
it.
There are no
recitations.
To help you with questions related to
your homework problems and the laboratory, the Help Room, physics A129,
will be staffed by personnel from this course for approximately thirty hours per
week. The schedule will be posted on the help room and on Blackboard
within the first week of classes. You can also reach your instructors by
email; put Physics 121 as the subject line of your message to get their
attention. The help rooms (A129 and A131) are supposed to be staffed by
Physics Department faculty and teaching assistants essentially all day, and there will probably be people there who can help you
with physics problems, even if they are not associated with this specific
course.
Laboratories are administered by the registrar as a
separate course, Phys 123. But you have to register for the course and the
lab together, and you will receive the same letter grade for the course and the
lab. Labs start in the week of September 8th. If you miss
a lab, you will receive a score of zero. If you miss more than one, they
will continue to count as zeros in computing your average and your letter grade
in the course will drop by one tick (e.g., from A- to B+) for each lab
missed after the first. (Not good.) Makeup labs (no penalty) will be
scheduled in several weeks during the semester. Note that only the
immediately preceding labs can be made up, and you can only make up labs that
you missed. If you cannot meet this schedule due to exceptional
circumstances (such as documented illness or death in the immediate family),
discuss with the instructor.
Lab reports are submitted online. You only
submit on paper to your TA your original data which are initialed by the TA and
your graphs. All are due two class days after your scheduled lab time. If
there are exceptional circumstances that require you to delay handing in a lab
report, discuss them IN ADVANCE with your lab TA. There will be a lab
quiz on Blackboard due 1 hour before the start of your lab session, and the
lab quizzes count 20% of your score in the lab.
Two Midterm exams are scheduled at 8:30 PM
on October 7th and November 3rd. The final exam is December 19th,
8:00 to 10:30 AM. You have to make sure there are no conflicts in your
schedule – we cannot grant a makeup exam for any foreseeable circumstances.
The registrar's policy that students have responsibility for avoiding exam
conflicts is crystal clear, and exceptions will not be
granted in this course. If you cannot take a midterm due to exceptional
circumstances (documented illness or death in the immediate family), discuss
with the instructor as soon as possible. We will increase the weights of
the other parts of the course accordingly. If you miss the final with a
valid excuse, you will receive an Incomplete in the course and a makeup final
will be scheduled at the beginning of the next semester. The exams will be
multiple choice, graded via scan-tron sheets (fill in the bubble with a #2
pencil).
Your final grade will be based on
the following.
15% Pre-workshop quizzes (which are
basically homework assignments).
10% Workshop "clicker" score
15%
Each of two midterms
25% Labs
20% Final
Exam
There are no extra
credit or other special supplementary assignments available. Your
course grade is based on the same exams, workshop, homework, and labs as
everybody else. Please do not embarass
yourself by coming to the instructors at the end of the semester and saying that
you need to receive a particular grade higher than the one you earned. You
will have plenty of feedback about your perfomance as
the course proceeds.
DISABILITY SUPPORT SERVICES (DSS)
STATEMENT If you have a physical, psychological,
medical, or learning disability that may impact your course work, please contact
Disability Support Services (631) 632-6748 or http://studentaffairs.stonybrook.edu/dss/.
They will determine with you what accommodations are necessary and
appropriate. All information and documentation is confidential. Students
who require assistance during emergency evacuation are encouraged to discuss
their needs with their professors and Disability Support Services. For procedures and information go to the following website:
http://www.stonybrook.edu/ehs/fire/disabilities/asp.
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY
STATEMENT. Each
student must pursue his or her academic goals honestly and be personally
accountable for all submitted work. Representing another person's work as your
own is always wrong. Faculty are required to report any
suspected instance of academic dishonesty to the Academic Judiciary. For more
comprehensive information on academic integrity, including categories of
academic dishonesty, please refer to the academic judiciary website at http://www.stonybrook.edu/uaa/academicjudiciary/
CRITICAL
INCIDENT MANAGEMENT Stony Brook University expects students to respect the
rights, privileges, and property of other people. Faculty are required to report
to the Office of Judicial Affairs any disruptive behavior that interrupts their
ability to teach, compromises the safety of the learning environment, and/or
inhibits students' ability to learn.
GOOD LUCK!