Physics 1500: Energy and Matter

Fall 2009

Instructor:	Marvin Johnson
Office:	N 169
Telephone:	667-3552 {E-mail: marvin@physics.csustan.edu}
Office Hours:	(Tentative) MWF 9:20-10:40 and Tuesday 11:15-12:15
Text:	Conceptual Physics by Hewitt, any recent edition.

Course Description

This is a survey course covering several areas of Physics. Since it is a survey course we will be moving rapidly. It is important that you keep up and do not fall behind. Hopefully you are vaguely familiar with much of this material from your High School classes. I will try to cover most of chapters 1-7 and parts of chapters 8-18 and 22-28. However, we will only cover a couple of sections from several of the chapters and we may skip a couple of chapters entirely.

I want you to become familiar with the basic concepts and methods physicists use to analyze the world around them. I want you to learn them well enough so that you can use them to analyze simple situations and explain them to other people.

I will hand out reading and homework assignments periodically, usually for three chapters at a time. I plan to have two or three exams, each worth 100 points, and a comprehensive final worth 150 points. The exams will count for about 5/6 of your grade. (I will discuss some exam options with you on the first day of class.) I will collect and grade the homework, and it will be worth about 1/6 of your grade, depending on how many I grade. I usually grade 5 of the homework questions in each assignment. Homework will be due at the beginning of class on the day indicated. It is important that you look at the questions, exercises and problems at the end of the chapter. If you can do them, you have probably understood the material in the chapter. If you can't do them, you need to seek extra help - come and see me. To make sure you are not dropped from the course, you must turn in the first homework assignment!

Your final grade will be computed from the total number of points you have earned. I will compute the percentage you have earned of the total possible points. The cutoffs are approximately

Percentage	Grade
88% & up	A
76-87	B
63-75	C
50-62	D
< 50	F

However, to get a C- or better for the course you must also pass the final exam, i.e. get a score of 50% or better on the final and you must also average at least 60% on your exams. If you are improving throughout the course, I will weight the later scores more heavily, but you need to do the homework to benefit from this. I will use the +/- grading system. This course will use mathematics through the level of MATH 0106, i.e. at the level of the ELM requirement.

Materials for this course will be posted on the Physics web server. This can be found by going to the URL http://physics.csustan.edu and clicking on the Energy and Matter link. You will be held responsible for materials posted there, so check it every couple of days.

I recommend that you work together as much as possible. I want you to discuss homework questions with each other, but please don’t copy homework answers. I also recommend you read the assigned chapters before the class lecture on the material and then listen to the lecture, asking questions about material you do not understand. I also post summaries at the above web site and you might find it helpful to check those.

A good practice is to read the homework questions and then read the chapter before I lecture on it. Then come to the lecture and make sure the questions you have from your reading are answered in the lecture. Since we will miss three lecture days, you will probably need to do this to keep up. I plan to take furlough days on 9/22, 10/12, 10/27, 11/12, 11/25, and 12/7 (maybe). The days in boldface are days our class would normally meet. (I may shift the furlough day on 12/7 to 12/18, which would not affect you.)

I will return all exams except the final. I hold the final exams two weeks into the next “regular” term, i.e. the final from the spring term is available two weeks into the fall term and the fall finals are available two weeks into the spring term. I will keep them on hand until the end of the next regular term. If you don’t pick them up by then, I’ll throw them in the trash. If you do not want them put into the trash, you must pick them up.