Physics 5  Syllabus

Foundations of Mechanics

Fall 2007

 

 

 

          Professor Meenakshi Narain

          Office:   B-H 524                    

          Phone:    x3-2364

          E-Mail:   Meenakshi_Narain@ brown.edu

          Office Hours:    Monday and Tuesday          1:30-2:30 PM         

                          

 

                by Halliday/Resnick/Walker, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

 

 

PERSONAL RESPONSE SYSTEM:

         Posted on MyCourses Website

         Due Wednesday after class

 (in addition it is linked at the mycourses site)

 

    Faculty in charge: Professor Greg Landsberg

    Office:    B-H 526   

    Phone:    x31464

    E-Mail:    landsberg@hep.brown.edu

    Office Hours: Mon and Tues 2:30-3:30 pm

 

 

This is the first semester of a two-semester sequence on the calculus based introductory physics, which is designed for students who have good math skills and desire for a deep understanding of physical principles. The course will cover general aspects of motion, Newton’s laws, momentum, energy, torque, angular momentum, gravitation, oscillation and waves, etc. The main aim of the course is to best understand interrelated physical laws and quantities with a balanced load of exercises that help improve students' math skills such as vector algebra and calculus. Hopefully, no one will be intimidated by the display of necessary derivations.

There are two in class exams during the first two thirds of the semester. The idea is to discover problems early and along the way rather than not until halfway through.  Students ought to realize, upon looking through the schedule of lectures, a speedy ride from the very first week. It would be a regrettable mistake to lag in the pace of assigned reading, or to even miss a single class lightly. Students are seriously urged to attend one conference each week, which is designed to help improve problem solving skills.

Office Hour

 

Take advantage of the office hours. Each member of the Physics 5 team will hold office hours to answer questions and/or provide help with course material.  These office hours can be a valuable resource to help answer questions and provide additional assistance with the course material. I am willing to help if you are willing to learn. Please email me and don't hesitate to stop by my office anytime if you have urgent questions.

Homework assignments are usually due weekly on Wednesdays in class, immediately after the lecture.  The lowest scoring homework grade will be dropped from computing the homework fraction of the final scores. The purpose of this is to give a break for those of the students who are unable to complete a particular assignment on time due to illness, family/personal difficulties, etc., while at the same time provide fairness to others so that everyone has the same amount of time to complete the assignments. No late homework will be accepted. It ought to be clear that it is in your best interest to complete all the problem sets if at all possible.

Solutions to the problem sets will be posted on the course web site shortly after each assignment is due.

There will be no makeup exams with 2 exceptions:

1. A student can not attend an exam on a chosen date for a religious reason, in which case the student must give the instructor a notice at least two weeks in advance in order to make an alternative arrangement. 

2. The student could not come to an exam due to serious illness or crisis in personal life, in which case a signed letter from a licensed physician or a recognized university consular must be provided within a week following the exam.

The conference meeting is an efficient setting of learning physics, particularly due to its smaller and more informal environment. The primary purpose of the conference sessions will be to help you practice in working problems. Part of the sessions may involve the instructor demonstrating how to solve problems, but you will spend the bulk of the sessions working on problems yourselves, or in small groups, with the guidance.

Final Grade

A total score for the course will be formed by taking the total scores for each graded portion of the course, and scaling the scores so that the maximum possible points are in the portions given in the summary section. The final grades will be translated into letter grades. The numerical borderline between letter grades (A/B, B/C, C/NC) will be set after the final exams have been graded.  

Conclusion

The best learning experience can only be achieved if you as students become genuinely interested, and also realize that what you learn in this course will benefit you in the future no matter what profession you enter. The strong analytical skills and ability to derive logical connections between diverse experimental observations, which the course will help you develop are, in the view of the instructor, well worth the effort regardless of whatever requirement the course may satisfy.

The instructor reserves the rights for changes and updates of other specifics upon the feedback of the class. Some modifications are expected to occur, and students will be informed of changes in the class and/or by periodically visiting the course website.