- Please check the date when you do an online homework. They are not always listed in order, but the dates are always clearly marked. There are always online homework assignments when there are reading assignments. If it is a practice test day, you do nothing online, but bring your worked practice test to class.
- The online homework that you submit is at the top of this homepage. Once everyone has submitted it, I will go online and suck down your answers, ask the computer to grade it, then post your grades. The homework menus on the left serve you copies you can print. More useful for solutions, but you can also suck them down for review once the links to the submission versions are gone (which will happen at 8:20 am).
- The study guide link is to the left here. The first two chapters and anything else interesting that you can't find in the menu to the left is under "Additional Info", which is in the menu to the left. Click on it, and see what is there. But first, please read all the way to the bottom of this page!!!!!!!
- If you ever have a -5 for an activity you have done, it means your lab TA has not entered your activity grade. Please speak to your TA in lab and get it fixed.
- "Homework" like the big ones due the first lecture of each week are found at the "Homework" link in the menu to the left.
If you are not sure about where to find something, please CAREFULLY read the messages below.
Welcome to UPI! Take a few minutes and make sure you can find everything on the website.
Attitudes and Beliefs Survey is here
There will be two types of homework listed every day, just to keep the numbers in sequence. On any day that is not the first lecture of the week, only the online homework will require anything. The homework will say something to the effect that there is only an online homework today (like homework 1 and 2, only homework 3 has problems in it).
Doing Well in UPI
BTW: If you just want a grade and don't actually want to learn some physics, please take this course somewhere else and transfer it in. Our goal in this class is to make sure you UNDERSTAND enough to help you be successful in later courses.
*Print the
Notes: Print the study guide and do the required reading as you work the self test problems. Mark points in the study guide and text that you do not understand and ask questions about them. Bring the study guide to lecture and follow along adding as needed. I do examples in lecture and talk a bit more about what things mean.
*Work the Homework: Do the homework as independently as possible. Come to office hours for help on problems you can't do or even do not COMPLETELY understand. You need to understand the homework to do well on the tests.
*Read the Activity: Read the activity before you come to lab. You will get more out of it and you will get done on time. There is usually a pre-lab set of questions to complete to encourage you to do this. You will lose points if these aren't done.
*Bring Your Notes to Lab: We often work problems together or use results from lecture in lab. You
need your notes.
*Work the Practice
Tests: The practice tests are examples of how the test would look if all three pieces were given together, so the questions may include more that cross topics. While each Friday’s test will only be one third of an exam, you should be able to tell what types of problems from the practice tests are ones you should know how to do, and see if you are comfortable with them. Work the practice test problems using only the formula sheet. Identify the kinds of problems with which you have trouble. Come and get help in time. The practice test without solutions will be assigned as homework right before the third test in each set of three, and will count as either homework or a lecture quiz. This will show you how you would have been tested if we could put all of the parts together in one exam, and will be good preparation for the final as well. Try it under timed exam conditions. (Most students complete it in under 1.5 hours, but we would allow a maximum of three hours for the whole thing. You will be doing it in three 50-minute chunks) The second practice test for each exam gets published early with solutions.
*Make sure you understand the Homework
Solutions: Read through the published solutions before the test, preferably as soon as you get your homework back, so you can find any fine details that you missed that we weren't grading for. We do not grade homework in close detail, so the solutions will give you more information, including detailed grading keys for some problems that would look like how they would be graded on a test. You are responsible for understanding everything in the homework, whether or not we grade it!
Answers to some questions a lot of students had right at the beginning of class in previous semesters:
Please look carefully at the syllabus, it will clear up a lot of things.
The chapter sections given in the grid, are, as explained on the syllabus, for the 2005 edition. If you have an earlier edition, go to the study guide and see what the section names are, to "convert". You will only need to do this in chapters 3 and 4. After that, all editions are close to the same.
•The experiment is listed on the syllabus, and the formal lab write-up will be over the experiment. The write up will be due a week after you do the experiment.
Most of you will take the final in this classroom. (I am assuming many of you will have an A without it.) Once we know how many people need to take the final (the last day of class) we will assign people to an overflow room if needed. For the final, there is a time limit.
Typo: on page 87 of the textbook, for calculating the final velocity of 2, he should use the final velocity of 2, +0.3m/s. His use of the relative velocity is just a typo. Relative velocity doesn't get used for anything to do with energy in chapter 6 (which is what our test is over-chapter 6 and everything up to it).
Lecture 1 is here
Lecture 27 is here.
Lecture 28 is here
Lecture 30 is here
Lecture 30 is here
Lecture 24 is here
Lecture 25 is here
Lecture 26 is here.
12/4/08 Brad Wilson made this cool program (here in applet form so you can play with it on the web) to explore properties of projectile motion. It will eventually be in "cool stuff" collection. click here
As you start pulling things together, or just want some extra examples, another great site (thanks Damon) is here
A pretty cool site for people who are interested in the basics of orbital mechanics is (thanks Rich) here
Click Here for a story of a pretty amazing example of physics in action!
I particularly liked this Thought du Jour, as it is part of what we are trying to accomplish with this class and the freshman engineering program: “The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives.” – Robert M. Hutchins
Cool human projectile motion video. Please do not try this at home. Click here
|