How Things Work: The Physics of Everyday Life, 4th ed. by Louis A. Bloomfield (published by John Wiley and Sons, 2010)
Note: While class references will be made to the 4th edition of this text, earlier editions could suffice for much of the course.
Pretests. These are multiple-choice questions on the reading material to be taught in the coming week. These tests will be accessed and submitted via the Blackboard. The idea behind these is to confirm your understanding of the textbook and get you thinking about the course material before coming to class. The lowest Pretest score for each student will be dropped when calculating final grades.
Class Participation is an important part of this
course.
There are many opportunities for active student participation, both in
and out of the classroom, including: responses to in-class questions,
surveys
that are submitted in-class or on-line, predictions for classroom
demonstrations
(extra credit is given for volunteering to participate in certain
demonstrations),
and "Minute Papers" (written feedback to the instructor on how you are
doing in the class and questions that you have). Responses to
in-class questions are scored primarily on effort, with secondary
emphasis on getting the "right" answers.
Attendance and participation in discussions, questions, and
quizzes are tracked using a class response system called "i-Clicker." We
will be following the text closely, so there will be little need to
take notes in the typical sense. Much of the class time will
be occupied with
demonstrations and class discussion. The PowerPoint presentations for
the class
will be available via Blackboard so that you can focus on the class
discussions without the distraction of having to take detailed notes.
Homework questions and projects will be assigned throughout the course as indicated on the Class Schedule. These will be due in class on the date assigned; 10% off for assignments submitted after class, until 5 PM, and NOT accepted after then. You are encouraged to work with other students on the homework (but not more than 2 or 3), but in the end, your write-up must be your own.
Web
Project. To help make connections between physics and the "real
world" and gain experience with webpage development using a wiki, students are
required
to publish an on-line group report that explains the physics of some
form
of technology of interest to their group. This project is due
near the end of the course. Each project will be reviewed by other students (similar
to the process for peer-reviewed journal publications).
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Class Participation | 10% | - | + | |||
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A |
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93-100 |
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B |
80-82 |
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87-89 | |
Web Project |
5% |
C |
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D |
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60-66 |
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F |
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