All grades should be on blackboard

All grades should now be on blackboard, the final exam included. Your final course average is listed as FinalAvg. This is your grade for the course, with +/- boundaries at 7.5/2.5%. I will still need to double & triple check all my calculations before posting actual grades on myBama, which should be tonight.

Please look to make sure everything looks in order. The grade listed as "Q9exlab" was the last lab that you could do as a bonus - it ended up counting as an extra quiz to help boost the average there. (The quiz average ended at 80% overall.)

Again: if you're wondering if you made a + or - grade, it goes like this:

• A+: grade >= 97.5
• A: 92.5<= grade < 97.5
• A- 90 <= grade < 92.5

Repeat as necessary.

Final exam time is 2:00 NOT 12:00

I wrote down the wrong time when I looked up the final exam time. It is actually

Wed, June 24, from 2-4:30.

It is not at 12:00. Sorry for the confusion. Spread the word.

Final exam coverage

The final exam will not be totally comprehensive. It will have two sections, each of which will work like the previous exams.

Section 1: recent things, solve 3 of 5

• 14.3-10 
• 16.2-12
• 18.7-11

Section 2: review problems, solve 3 of 5

• all other material covered except
• Ch. 13, 17

You will be given a comprehensive formula sheet, and you can bring in a sheet of paper like before. The final exam is Wed, June 24, from 2-4:30. The final exam is in the lecture room, not the lab room.

UPDATE: I had listed the exam time incorrectly before, it is correct now.

Lab for Mon 22 June 2015

Tomorrow, you'll do a lab on calorimetry, it is pretty straightforward stuff. There will be a short quiz on temperature and heat.

Homework 3 solutions

Here you go. They are (partially) relevant to tomorrow's exam.

Exam 3 coverage

Exam 3 will work just like the last two. I've altered the coverage slightly, since I don't think we covered enough on waves yet to put that on the exam. So, the following sections will be covered on the exam:

Rotation/rolling/angular momentum/torque: 10.6, 10.8-10, 11.2-4, 11.6-8, 11.10-11

Gravitation: 13.2-8

Oscillations: 15.2-7

Problems for 17, 18 June

A couple of problems for tomorrow and Thursday. We'll go over most of them in class.

Lab for W 17 June

Tomorrow, you'll do a lab on standing waves. There will be a quiz on waves (Ch. 16).

grades on blackboard

They should be fixed now, with updates for Lab2 and Quiz5. Please check that everything looks OK.

Tomorrow's lab

Tomorrow's lab will be on simple harmonic motion.

Lab grades are not right

Somehow, all the lab grades got mixed up during upload. I'll fix it over the weekend, but if your lab grade isn't showing up correctly now, this is probably why.

Current grades

I've posted all the grades I have so far on Blackboard. I could spend a whole lecture explaining how Blackboard is a massive pile of fail, but it does work in the end, to some degree, so I'll not complain. It gets the job done, it is reasonably secure, but I can offer no further compliments.

Anyway. Here is what we have.

* Quizzes 1-4 are graded. I dropped the lowest quiz in calculating your overall average, as the quiz average is quite low. I don't have quiz 5 grades yet, but I suspect an upturn.
* Lab report 1 is there, I don't have lab report 2 yet.
* Homework problems 1-8 (through 8 June) are included, I've not finished grading later problems. Nothing dropped in calculating your overall average.
* Exam 1 is included, but not exam 2 yet.
* Your average before exam 2, including: quizzes 1-4 (dropping 1), homework problems 1-8, lab 1, and exam 1 is included as a separate column.

The main thing you should do now is check for discrepancies and bring them to my attention as soon as possible. If, for example, I'm missing a HW you're sure you turned in, we should figure this out quickly. Make sure your scores one Blackboard match what you've been handed back in general.

Exam 1 and its solution are available

Here you go.

Exam 2

Exam 2 is this coming Thursday 11 June during our usual lab time (8am) in our usual lab classroom (GAL 203). The exam format will be much like last time, and I again expect you will not need the entire class period. Recall that the lab period is outlandishly early in the morning, and it can't be helped.

Here are the sections from the textbook covered

• Work & KE (7.3-7)
• Potential energy (9.2-5, 7-8)
• Momentum (9.4-10; notably excluding center of mass)

There will be 5 problems in total, of which you must complete 4. There will be a formula sheet (much like this, but without the rotation stuff) providing all the basic formulas and any numerical constants you will need. You can also bring in one sheet of 8.5x11in paper of your own with notes, etc. What you put on the one sheet you bring in is entirely up to you, and you can use the front & back of the sheet.

Basically, same drill as last week, different chapters. 

this week's homework

Find it here. First problems due tomorrow (10 June).

Lab for tomorrow 10 June

Tomorrow we'll do two short procedures. One on the coefficient of restitution (how much height does a ball lose after bouncing), one is on statistical analysis demonstrated by card counting.

Both are relatively short (in spite of the longish introduction on the first one), and you should have plenty of time to finish both.

For the lab report this week, that means you'll have 3 labs in total. You still only need to write a report on one of them, include the raw data for the other two as an appendix for your report.

(Also: there will be a short quiz on momentum.)

Lab for Mon 8 June

Tomorrow, you'll do a lab on momentum.

Quiz 4

Quiz 4 and an answer key can be found here.

Exam 1 is Thursday at 8am during the lab period

As you may be aware, exam 1 is Thursday during our usual lab time (8am) in our usual lab classroom (GAL 203). While this is a 2hr50min hour class period, I am designing it to be more like a 1.5 hour exam. You will have the full 2hr50min if you need it, but if you finish sooner (like I hope) you can just leave early.

Here are the sections from the textbook covered

• 1D motion (2.3-2.9)
• 2D motion (4.2-7)
• Force & motion (5.2-9, 6.5; friction noticeably absent)

There will be 6 problems in total, of which you must complete 4. Problems meaning no multiple choice, show your work. If you do more than 4, I will grade them all and use the best 4 (but try to get 4 done well first). There will be a formula sheet (much like this) provided with all the basic formulas and any numerical constants you will need, and you can bring in one sheet of 8.5x11in paper of your own with notes, etc. What you put on the one sheet you bring in is entirely up to you, and you can use the front & back of the sheet.

There will be heavy partial credit on the exam, so show all your work and be as clear as possible about what you are trying to do. You won't have to follow the homework template, but it won't hurt either.

Good things to study? Old homework and exams, and the homework problems I've given you so far. The exam questions will be easier than the homework I've given you, so don't worry too much. Doing the example problems in the book, or the odd numbered end of chapter problems is also good (so you can see the answer when you're done).

Now, 8am is a tough time for an exam if you're not a morning person. I'd advise first to get some sleep the night before, and second to exchange contact info with some of your classmates so you can wake each other up as need be. If you do oversleep for the exam, showing up late is fine. You won't get extra time on the exam, but you'll be allowed to take the exam up until 10:50. If, for example, you don't show up until 9am, you've still got 1hr50min. Better to show up late than not at all.

Quiz 2, 3 solutions

You can find solutions for the first three quizzes here.

Solutions for the first week's homework

Substantially complete solutions to the first week's homework are now ready, and can be found here. It is obviously particularly important that you read the solutions for problems you weren't totally confident about, but it is probably still worth skimming the solutions even for the problems you had no trouble with, just to be sure.

Also: brevity is not a strong suit. I tried to be explicit about exactly what I was doing at every step (with the exception of skipping a few algebra steps here and there that you should be able to fill in), and as a result the solutions are fairly long. There is no TL;DR version I can come up with that does a passable job of explaining things.

Lab for W 3 June

Tomorrow, we'll do a lab on friction forces.

Week 2 homework

Week 2's homework is out. First problems due tomorrow, we'll go over some of them in class.