| Instructors: | Prof. Marjorie Olmstead (Lecture) Prof. Peter Shaffer (Tutorials) Prof. Toby Burnett (Laboratory) |
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| Lectures: | MWF 10:30 - 11:20 | A118 Physics-Astronomy Bldg. |
| Tutorials: | Attendance is mandatory; locations and times of
individual
sections are listed in the Time
Schedule. You MUST be present at the
first
tutorial meeting or you may be dropped from the course. Tutorial homework will be assigned and
collected in your individual tutorial section. Pretest completion
and participation in tutorial both count towards the tutorial portion
of your grade. About 1/4 of each midterm and 1/3 of the final
exam will be directly related to tutorial. |
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| Laboratory: | You must register for a
section of
123Z as well as 123B. Attendance in mandatory; locations and
times
of individual sections are listed in the Time
Schedule. You MUST
be present at the first laboratory meeting or you may be dropped from
this
course. If you complete fewer than six labs during
the quarter, and do not make up the work, your grade for the entire
course
will be 0.0! Completing only six or seven of the eight labs will
reduce your
grade
significantly. In addition to graded lab reports, there will be
lab-related questions on at least one midterm plus the final exam. |
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| Course
Elements: |
The
various elements of the course (lecture, tutorial, laboratory,
homework, exams, etc.) are designed to meet different needs of students
in this course, who come from many backgrounds, learn in many different
ways, and have many different learning goals. The purpose behind
each element and their interrelationships are described here. Access to the course GoPost (chat room), tutorial pretests, and lecture homework (WebAssign) requires a UWNetID, and is limited to students enrolled in Physics 123B this quarter. If you are making up an incomplete, please contact Prof. Olmstead to be added to the list of UWNetID's associated with this class. |
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| Office Hours: | Prof. Marjorie Olmstead (Lecture) ph122mo@u.washington.edu OR olmstd@u.washington.edu |
Study Center (AM018): Monday after class: 11:30 - 12:00 Wednesday before class: 9:45-10:15 OR in PAB B433 Tuesday 9:30-10:00 am OR by appt. |
| Prof. Peter Shaffer (Tutorials) shaffer@phys.washington.edu |
C218 Physics-Astronomy Bldg. ..543-6705 by appointment |
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| Prof. Toby Burnett (Laboratory) tburnett@u.washington.edu | B201 Physics-Astromony Bldg. --543-8963 by appointment |
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| You are strongly encouraged to come
to office hours and to utilize the Study Center. |
||
| Teaching assistants will be
available
weekdays from 9:30-4:30 for consultation in the Physics Study Center
located
in Room AM018. (To reach the Physics Study Center, go down the
stairs
that circle around the Foucault pendulum and proceed toward the end of
the hall.) Students are encouraged to gather and work
cooperatively in small
groups
in the Physics Study Center. Prof. Olmstead will hold her
scheduled office hours there. Note that with 250 students in
Physics 123, and over 1000 students in other sections of 121, 122, 114,
115, and 116, it is not possible to give extensive one-on-one tutoring
in the Study Center. Also, please be aware that the particular TA
on duty at any specific hour may not have taught 123 recently, and that
faculty teaching 12x or 11x will give first priority to their own
students. The Lecturer in charge of the Study Center is Daryl Pedigo. Please let him know if TA's are not there during their scheduled times. |
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| Pretests: | There will be weekly short pretests administered HERE on the web. These are intended to start you thinking about the concepts that will be addressed in tutorial later in the week, and must be completed between lecture Friday and lecture Monday. Pretests will NOT BE GRADED or handed back. Completion of these tests will, however, be a factor in determining your final grade. | |
| Textbooks: | Physics for Scientists
and Engineers, by R. D. Knight. Tutorials in Introductory Physics, McDermott, Shaffer, et al. The Lab Manual is available at the University Bookstore. You should purchase the lab manual BEFORE your first laboratory session. Students are expected to read the relevant sections in the book BEFORE class. Reading assignments are listed on the Syllabus. |
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| Homework: | 1) Lecture HW will
be assigned each week. It will be posted, administered and turned in
on the web using the WebAssign System. This is the first quarter for
physics to use WebAssign, so please be patient with any glitches that
may arise. Unless otherwise announced, homework will be due at 11:59 pm
Wednesdays. You may receive 70% credit until 11:59 pm
Thursday. Each student's
lowest
(percentage) homework score will be dropped. Note that WebAssign
will list the due date as Thursday 11:59 pm, but it will only give you
70% credit for the last 24 hours before the due date. 2) Tutorial HW will be assigned and collected in tutorial sessions. One problem from each assignment will be graded in detail, and will contribute to your score for tutorials. Computers are available in the Physics Study Center from 8:30 a.m.-5:20 p.m. each day and at various other locations around campus. |
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| Exams: | There will be three
50-minute
midterms and a two-hour final. Midterms: Currently scheduled for In
Class The exams will include both multiple choice and free-response questions. Approximately one quarter to one half of each exam will be based on material emphasized in the tutorials and in the laboratory. The midterm exams will primarily cover material from the few weeks prior to the week of the exam, but may include earlier material as well. The final examination will be comprehensive. All exams will be closed book with one 8.5"x11" sheet of notes allowed. Calculators are permitted. Laptop computers are not permitted, and the use of the text-storage capability now available on many calculators is not permitted. Cell phones and text messaging are also not permitted. Exams are to be your own work; you are not permitted to collaborate with any other person. The Physics department reserves the right to ask for valid identification from any student during examinations. The lowest midterm score for each student will be dropped. A grade of 0.0 will be assigned to students who miss the final examination or two midterms. There will be NO make-up exams. Students with outside professional, service, or career commitments (i.e. military service, ROTC, professional conference presentation, NCAA sports, etc.) conflicting with the exam dates must contact the instructor early in the quarter to establish alternate examination procedures. Students who miss an exam without making prior arrangements with the lecture instructor will drop that exam score. If you are ill with a contagious disease on the day of an exam, please contact the professor by phone or email BEFORE the exam (please do NOT bring your disease-causing microbes to her office or the classroom!). Students with special needs identified by DSS should contact the professor early in the quarter to arrange accommodation. Seats will be
assigned for
exams. Please check Tycho
or WebAssign for
seat assignments before the each midterm and the final. Note that a "solid citizen" performance on an exam is
typically in the 60-70% range -- students who can get about 80% of the
points on about 80% of the material are doing OK (around a B). |
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| Regrades: | If you believe that the points on the examination
were
incorrectly totaled or if there is a gross error in the grading, you
may
return an exam for regrading. To do so, you must resubmit the
examination
no later than at the beginning of the lecture following the one in
which
the exams are returned. You must write a brief note on the front page
or attached to the front page of the exam explaining the possible error
in the grading. The entire examination should be returned. Do
not make any changes or marks on the other pages of the examination.
NOTE: Portions of each examination are photocopied. You should be aware that any request for a regrade may result in a regrading of the entire exam. Therefore your total score may decrease. |
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| Time
Commitment: |
Each
quarter, the UW Office of Educational Assessment conducts
surveys
of undergraduate courses. For many years, the PHYS121-2-3 courses have
been among the courses reportedly requiring the most hours of work per
week outside of class. A typical course will show a span from 5 hours
per
week to 20 hours of study per week outside of class, probably including
some time spent on lab. Many courses claim to require at
least
two
hours outside of class for each hour in class; PHYS123
delivers. If you want a good return on the investment of 7 hours
per
week you are already committed to in class, tutorial, and laboratory,
you should
invest at least that much time outside of formal
class meetings working on the course . |
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| Math
Requirements: |
MATH
126/129/134 (Calculus III) is a co-requisite for this class. The
key concepts from Math 126 that we will use include simple Fourier
series concepts and partial derivatives. We will also do a lot of
trigonometry, including adding and multiplying sines and cosines. |
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| Cheating: | Please don't even think about cheating. It is a real pain for the professor to have to write letters to the dean to report cheating, but she has done it before and will do it again. Your decision whether or not to pursue a technical career should not be hastened by the abnormally low grade obtained if you are caught or postponed by the uncharacteristically high grade you might obtain if you are not. | |
| Feedback: | Students are encouraged to give Prof. Olmstead
weekly feedback
through the weekly
questionaires.
For most weeks they contain two basic questions: what do you
still
need to hear about from last week's lecture, and what is most confusing
in the book for next week's lecture. They are available from the
end of class Friday until 9:00 am Monday. These will be read by
Prof.
Olmstead before each Monday's lecture and she will adjust her lecture
accordingly.
Students filling out these Questionaires will receive the
equivalent of 1 correct "clicker question"
for each one filled out responsibly. (note: simply writing
"nothing" or "everything" will not yield credit). |
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| Course grade: | Concurrent enrollment in PHYS123 lecture,
laboratory and tutorial is
mandatory;
students will receive a combined grade for lecture, tutorial and lab.
The
final course grade is based on the best two out of three midterms
(40%),
the final exam (25%), lecture HW (10%), tutorial participation and HW
(10%),
and Lab (15%). The lecture instructor reserves the right to adjust
individual
final grades by no more than 0.2 grade points (about 5% out of 4.0
possible)
based on participation in the lecture class meetings and other work
related
to the lecture (e.g., Clickers, and Weekly Feedback
Questionaires). See 12X
Committee Grading Policy for more details. Be aware that many technical majors have a minimum grade requirement for a core of lower-division technical classes including the PHYS121-2-3 sequence. Therefore, each student is strongly urged to discuss departmental entry requirements with their undergraduate or departmental advisors, and plan their course loads accordingly. A grade of 2.0 in Physics 123 is required to move on to Physics 225 and 227; higher grades are recommended (though not currently required) for pursuit of a physics major. This threshold may be raised to 2.3 in the near future. Typically, the average in 123 is 3.0 with about 10% of the class receiving 3.9 or 4.0. This, of course, fluctuates depending on individual commitment and performance. It is your responsibility to check your grades on the Tycho and WebAssign system every week or two and report any problems to both the lecture instructor and the relevant TAs (and/or lab/tutorial faculty) immediately. Lab, tutorial and exam grades should be recorded for your review within one week from the date that papers are submitted for grading. WebAssign homework grades should be recorded within 24 hours of submission. Clicker points should be recorded every midterm. Grading problems that are reported in a timely fashion will be investigated and, if action is warranted, corrected. The lecture, lab and tutorial instructors may choose to ignore grading complaints that are not reported in a timely fashion. A student who is passing the course but has extenuating circumstances preventing completion of the course (e.g., a medical emergency), may apply to the professor for a grade of incomplete BEFORE the final exam. You should be aware that this is the last quarter for the forseeable future that UW will be using the text by Knight -- future 123 classes will use the text by Tipler and cover slightly different material. This may increase the work required to make up an incomplete. |
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Back to 123B Home Page: http://courses.washington.edu/ph122mo/W08
This page is found at http://courses.washington.edu/ph122mo/W08/CourseInfo.html