Welcome to the General Physics I course (PHY 302 K). This syllabus describes the section taught by Professor Vadim Kaplunovsky in Spring of 2008 (unique number 59860). Other sections should have their own syllabi.
General Physics is a technical course, so expect to see a lot of formulae and to do a lot of algebra. I also will introduce and use the concepts of derivative and integral, but you would not have to calculate them. You can take this class without knowing any calculus, but please make sure your algebra is up to speed; if it's poor or rusty, you will find the class very hard.
The General Physics course is aimed at Nursing, Pharmacy, and other health-related majors,
and it is also recommended for Architecture, Education, and several other majors.
It is acceptable but not recommended for pre-medical students because
this class often skips some subjects which may appear on the MCAT exam.
I strongly advise all premeds to take the
For administrative reasons, the General Physics is split into two courses. The first course (PHY 302 K) covers Mechanics, Thermodynamics, and Vibrations and Waves, while the second course (PHY 302 L) covers Electricity and Magnetism, Optics, and Modern Physics. Each course is taught by different professors; I will not teach 302 L next year. If you are interested in Physics, you should take both courses.
The textbook for this class is «College Physics» by Serway and Faughn, 7th edition, volume 1. (Volume 2 is for the second course, 302 L.).
Every now and then, I'll bring some supplementary notes to class, or post them on the web. But you do not need to buy any supplementary textbooks, study guides, etc. Likewise, you won't need clickers or special classtalk calculators; any scientific calculator will do. But the lab will have its own manual, and you do need to buy it.
In principle, this course should cover everything in the textbook, all 14 chapters of the first volume. But in practice this is too much material for most students to absorb in one 3-unit semester, so I am going to skim some less important subjects rather lightly, or even skip a few of them altogether.
When I start a new chapter of the textbook, I'll announce which sections (if any) I am going to skip. The exams will not involve the skipped material.
The Physics Lab 102 M should be taken in the same semester as the 302 L class. You cannot take the class now and postpone the lab until later. (But if you have already taken the lab, you don't have to retake it.) If you have trouble registering for the lab or getting into a section which fits your schedule, go to Pat Morgan (Physics undergraduate secretary), she might be able to help.
If you have taken trigonometry in high school (or in another college), make sure
the registrar knows it:
Take your grade transcripts and go to Pat Morgan (Physics undergraduate secretary),
her office is in RLM 5.216.
If you have never taken trigonometry, you must take a remedial Math class
If you do not register for the lab or do not take care of the math prerequisite by the twelfth class day, the registrar will automatically drop your registration for this class. I have no control over this process.
In my section of this class, I shall not use any computerized homework systems. The homework assignments and the exams will be graded by the TA who will look at your whole solution rather then just the answer. You will get a partial credit for a partially correct solution, and getting the concepts right will count for more then getting the right number at the end of the calculation.
Most homework problems will be taken from the textbook, but I will also add a few of my own. Each assignment will be posted on the web page http://bolvan.ph.utexas.edu/~vadim/Classes/2008s.homeworks/HWpage.html. The solutions will be posted on the same page after the due date.
Usually, I will assign a new homework set every week, beginning with the second class, although sometimes I'll give you an extra class to catch up. Altogether, there will be ten to twelve homework sets. Each set is due a week from the day it was posted. I shall collect the homeworks in class; please do not bring them to my office or mailbox.
You may do your homework individually or in small teams of two or three students; larger teams are not allowed. A team should submit a single solution signed by all students in the team. If you work in a team, make sure everybody understands the whole solution — otherwise, you will flunk the exams.
There will be three mid-term tests during the semester, and one final exam at the end.
All exams are open-book. You may bring any books or notes you like, provided you can manage them at your seat without disturbing other students. But you must do your exam by yourself: Getting help from another person during the exam is not allowed. For this reason, using cellphones or Internet during the exam is not allowed.
Please bring your ID to all tests, especially to the final exam. To prevent cheating, we (me and the TA) will ID all students. If you don't have a UT ID, bring your driver's license or passport.
Bring a calculator. Most exam problems can be done with pencil-and-paper arithmetic, but sometimes a calculator can speed up the work.
All mid-term tests will be at the regular class time, in the usual classroom. Each test will take 60 minutes. I shall use the remaining classtime to explain the solutions.
The first mid-term test will be in mid-February, the second in late March, and the third in late April. I'll announce the exact dates a weak or two before each test.
The subject matter of each test may include anything studied in class up to the last lecture before the test. It may also involve subjects studied before the previous test, so don't flush your memories after the test is over.
Only two best mid-term scores will count towards your grade. This allows one missed or botched test (because of illness or emergency) without damage to the grade. But if you miss (or foul up) two or all three tests, your grade will suffer. There will be no make-up tests for any reason whatsoever.
The final exam is comprehensive — it covers everything studied in class, from the first lecture to the last. In terms of the textbook, the final exam covers chapters 1 through 9, except for sections §6.5 and §9.2 I have skipped.
The final exam is scheduled for May 8 (Thursday), 7 to 10 PM, in room RLM 4.102. This exam is three hours long, but otherwise, it follows the same rules as the midterm tests: open book, open notes, but no cellphones or Internet.
The grades are based on homeworks, mid-term tests, and the final exam with the following weights:
The net score will be adjusted upward according to lecture attendance. The adjustment is non-linear: It is small for high scores but becomes important when the score is low but the attendance is high.
The brackets for the ABCDF letter grades in terms of the adjusted net scores will be set after the final exam.
Here are the formulae I used for calculating the scores and setting grades.
The input data for each student were the raw homework scores r_hw_1,…,r_hw_12, raw mid-term scores r_mt_1, r_mt_2, r_mt_3, raw final exam score r_fin, and the attendence count att_count.
First, I converted all the raw scores into percentage scores as
hw_1=r_hw_1*100/normalization(r_hw_1);
and likewise for hw_2,…,hw_12, mt_1, mt_2, mt_3,
and fin.
Then I calculated:
Finally, I assigned the letter grades according to the followong brackets:
I shall post the grades to the registrar by Monday 5/12. Before that, I will re-check the data for errors, and I will also check for exceptional circumstances which warrant raising (or lowering) the letter grade. Thus far, I have not made any exceptions, but I would like to make one more scan before I post the official grades.