Course Description
A study of Newton's Laws, the conservation laws of classical mechanics and their application to physical systems. Prerequisite or co-requisite is Calculus I. (Satisfies General Education Requirements III.Q and V.8.a.)

Course Goals:
Students will increase their conceptual and mathematical understanding of classical mechanics and develop and improve their problem solving skills. 

Course Objectives:
After this course, the student should be able to:
    describe the motion of objects (mathematically and conceptually)
    apply conservation laws (momentum and energy)
    solve word problems
    apply physical principles to novel situations
    provide a description of how to solve a problem, justifying your choices
    provide different representations for a problem (verbal, graphical, vector, diagrams, or equations)

Communication
I will use the world wide web for communicating, so please consult the web page for class announcements, exam hints, homework assignments, and other useful information.  You are responsible for checking the course web page for information as not all announcements will be made in class. You will also be submitting work (see OMA below) frequently over email. 

Feel free to call my office whenever you need to. I tend to check my voicemail and email frequently, so if I am not around, I will get in touch with you as soon as possible. One of the benefits of going to a small college like Sweet Briar is the opportunity to get personalized attention from your professors, take advantage of this in all your courses.

Text:
Fundamentals of Physics, Sixth Edition, by Halliday, Resnick and Walker.
We will cover the first 12 chapters of the text.

Preparation:
You are expected to have working knowledge of algebra and trigonometry. Calculus is a co-requisite for this course.  I will provide some review of the calculus we will use.  If you do not feel comfortable with the level of math in this course, please come talk to me.

I expect you to have studied the relevant material for each day as defined by the assignments web page. Assume that I may give you a short quiz at any time to help motivate you to be prepared for class.  The most common, and perhaps the deadliest habit is to postpone your assault of the material. You are expected to diligently apply yourself, since it is your future you are working for. The best advice I can give you is come to every class, take good notes, read the book, do the problems, talk with your classmates, and keep up. I know these sound trivial, but they are all too often ignored.

Attendance/Class participation:
Attendance, timeliness, and participation are critical to the learning process and an integral part of this course.  Coming to class late is distracting to students in the class and in general irritates professors. Failure to attend class on the day an assignment is assigned or due does not mean that you may turn in a late assignment without penalty. There are certain aspects of the course for which the information can be obtained only in class, thus, a student who misses class will miss material they will need on quizzes and tests. There will be no makeup quizzes.
Not only are you required to come to class, but you must TAKE PART IN CLASS.   I reserve the right to make class participation a part of your grade in any percentage I choose.

Grades:
Homework sets..............................................................20 %
One minute assignments and class participation..............5 %
Three exams...................................................................45 %
Short quizzes........................................................... .....10 %
Cumulative closed book final exam...............................20 %

I reserve the right to alter the grade scale (though this is unlikely....), BUT only in ways that are advantageous to the student.

Homework Sets:
Homework will be assigned on the class web page approximately every Friday and will be due the following Friday.  HW will generally consist of 10-12 questions and problems from the text. Just as one would practice a sport to get good at it, one must practice physics; the HW is your chance to do this.  Turning in late HW is disrespectful to your classmates and your instructor and in general will be seriously penalized.

Waiting to do the HW the night before it is due is a SERIOUS MISTAKE!  Waiting to study the night before an exam is an even bigger mistake!

I encourage you to work with your peers on the HW. Conversations with your classmates are an excellent way to learn. However, this does not mean you should copy homework.  One rule to go by when working with classmates: if you don't understand what you are writing down, don't turn it in. If you do not understand the HW, the tests and quizzes will reflect this.  

The ability to communicate your technical work to others is vital to your success as a scientist or engineer.   In this course, in addition to getting homework problems correct it is your job as a scientist to communicate effectively how you solved the problem.  This may mean using words to describe what you are doing instead of simply writing down equations. This also means being organized. It is best to do a problem and then transcribe your solution in a neat form to another piece of paper. I will take off for unorganized but correct work.  I also reserve the right to take points off your HW (even when fully correct!) for messy solutions.  

HW will be graded on a 3 point scale. 3 for a completely correct solution, 2 for a mostly correct solution, 1 for using the correct concept but little else, and a 0 for no effort.

An answer to a HW problem which is given with no units will automatically be given a 1 out of 3 regardless of correctness.

One Minute Assignments:
The OMA will consist of a few short questions in regard to the lecture and text. The OMA question will be posed on lecture days (MWF) by 5 pm and generally due the following lecture day by 8 am . Amazingly, past class averages for OMA's were only around 75 %.  There is no reason why the OMA should not help your grade!  The OMA is not graded for correctness, only attempt. 

Tests:
There will be three hour long tests and a cumulative final exam.  If students show appropriate interest, I will hold a review session outside of class before each test.  

Since I can't write exams in such a way that I know in advance precisely how difficult they are, I can't give you an advance guarantee of points resulting in a specific grade. I will give you specific feedback after exams and anytime you ask. I encourage you to see me at any time for my assessment of your work.

Quizzes:
From time to time you will be given a short quiz.  These may be announced or not announced.  If you keep up with the reading and homework these quizzes should not be difficult.  I expect to give you at least 4 quizzes.  Being absent (or late) on a quiz day will result in a zero for that quiz.

Lab:
Physics 131 lab is a separate 1 credit course.  I STRONGLY encourage all students enrolled in this course to take the corresponding lab.  The lab will undoubtedly help you learn physics and get a better grade in  this course.

Tentative Course Schedule:
The following is a tentative schedule to give you an idea of the pace of the course. I will keep a dynamic web based schedule where I will post topic information, all assignments, test dates, etc. that will be updated every day or so. Usually, the Thursday class will be a problem session. I will likely miss at least one scheduled class as I plan to attend a conference in November.

last updated August 20, 2003
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