Course Syllabus
1. General Information
1.1 Course websites:
The course (PHY2053) is run through Canvas. The web site for the course is accessed through UF e-Learning or directly at: https://ufl.instructure.com/
This site will contain important announcements, posted lectures, previous exams, correct answers for your exams (once taken), and course grades. In addition, you can access the McGraw-Hill Connect online homework system through this Canvas website. Caution: Canvas does not correctly compute grades, as it cannot account for drop-worst (see Section 3.2) and extra credit. Your course grade can always be computed using the grade estimator, found on the front page of our Canvas course page.
The Physics Dept. course website at: http://www.phys.ufl.edu/courses/phy2053/spring17/
provides a link to the Canvas course and a repository for the public syllabus.
1.2 Course Instructors:
- Prof. Heather Ray, Office: Physics Building Office Rm.# 2237
- Prof. Andrew Rinzler, Office: Physics Building Office Rm.# 2251
Office hours for course instructors and teaching assistants are listed in Section 5.
Communication with the Instructors: Only messages through the official course e-Learning site are guaranteed a response. Your instructors get tons of spam e-mails to their direct accounts so direct e-mails there have a very high likelihood of being ignored. If you have an emergency in which you absolutely cannot access the e-Leaning site and you must e-mail the instructors directly, to have a hope of getting a response you MUST e-mail from your gator-link account (it is how we know you are who you say you are) and PHY2053 MUST appear in the subject line.
1.3 Textbook:
- Title: Physics, Volume 1
- Authors: Giambattista et al.
- Publisher: McGraw-Hill
- Edition: 3rd
- Bundle only offered in the bookstore (Connect HW and online text): ISBN 9781259629525
The online homework in this course will be worth 5% of the final cumulative grade for the course. Weekly quizzes and the two during term and the final exams will all rely heavily on problems from the homework.
2. Course Schedule
The detailed course schedule is listed in the appendix of this document, because it spans several pages.
3. Grading
3.1 Grade components:
Your course grade will not be assigned based on a curve, but based on a 100-point fixed scale:
| A | A- | B+ | B | B- | C+ | C | C- | D+ | D | D- |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 90 | 85 | 81 | 77 | 73 | 69 | 65 | 60 | 55 | 50 | <50 |
Note: A grade of C- is not a qualifying grade for major, minor, Gen Ed, or College Basic distribution credit. For further information on UF's Grading Policy, see:
https://catalog.ufl.edu/ugrad/current/regulations/info/grades.aspx#hgrades
http://www.isis.ufl.edu/minusgrades.html
|
The advantage of the fixed scale is that you are not competing with other students to “get ahead of the curve”. Everyone who works hard can do well in the class, and to the extent that it helps you learn, we encourage collaboration. The 100 points that determine the overall grade are divided so that 75 points are earned through exams, 20 points through quizzes, and 5 points through homework. Beyond this, you can earn up to 5 “bonus” points by answering in-class H-ITT clicker questions. The final grade you have earned in this class is boosted by extra credit in HITT, extra credit from participation in recitation, and by the drop worst factor for quizzes, homework, and HITT (see below). This is large amount of extra points, and can easily make the difference of an entire letter grade in your final course grade. Take advantage of it. |
** optional bonus points |
There will be no additional curve applied. However, we do round up (0.5 percentage points and up gets rounded up to the next integer percentage point. 59.0% does not get rounded up to 60%).
3.2 “Drop worst %” factors
It is unrealistic to expect that one will not have a bad day or week (due to illness or some other personal reason) during the semester. To accommodate this reality, we use a “Drop worst %” factor that has the effect of dropping some fraction of homework, quizzes, and H-ITT in which your performance was hindered. If you have scored a total points in one of the grade components Ncomp and that grade component has a “Drop worst 10%” factor, the number of points entering the final grade calculation (Ngrade) will be:
up to the maximum number of grade points that can be awarded for that component (that is you cannot e.g. get more than 5 points for the homework component). In the following sections, we describe the different grade components and list their corresponding “Drop worst %” factors.
3.3 Exams:
There are two during-term exams and a final exam. Each exam contributes 25 points to your final grade. Every point on the exam corresponds to one point toward the final grade. There is no “Drop worst %” correction for exams. The date and time for each exam, and the chapters it covers are listed in the Course Schedule (Appendix A). If you miss one of the three exams for an approved reason you will be admitted to the comprehensive make-up exam, held at the end of the semester. The score obtained on the cumulative exam will replace the zero points on the missed exam. Valid excuses are officially sanctioned UF events, medical excuses or family emergencies. There will be one cumulative make-up exam (covering material from the entire semester) given on Wednesday April 19th, 2017. The grade on this make-up exam will replace the missed exam.
Exams will not likely take place in the lecture hall in the physics building.
Room assignments where you will take an exam will be announced in the days leading up to the exam and posted on the course eLearning page. Exams are multiple choice with your answers bubbled in on Scantron sheets. Mark your answers carefully. What you mark on the Scantron form will determine your score (independent of your having meant otherwise). We advise that you mark your solutions on the Scantron sheet as you progress through the exam, and double-check the answers at the end of the exam by comparing the marked solutions to your notes on the exam and scratch paper.
You should bring a calculator, #2 pencils, an eraser and your picture ID (preferably Gator One ID Card) to the exam. Calculators may not be shared and may not have electronic communications capability. Cell phones as calculators are not allowed. Private formula sheets are not allowed. Use of either constitutes academic fraud. Scratch paper and an official formula sheet for the exam will be provided.
The two during-term exams and the final exam will be equally weighted and count for a maximum of 75 points (out of 100) towards your overall course grade. None of the exam grades will be dropped in the grade calculation.
3.4 Discussion Sections, Quizzes:
Discussion (recitation) sections start the first week of classes (i.e. Wednesday, January 4th 2017). Quizzes start on Monday-Wednesday January 16th - 18th, 2017. A quiz will be administered during the first 20 minutes of the first discussion section meeting of a week. The first quiz is used to gauge the basic math skills of the class, and is not counted toward your final grade. The remaining quizzes will be counted in your total quiz grade.
The quiz will be held on the first day of your recitation: MW discussion sections have quizzes on Monday. TR have it on Tuesday, and WF have it on Wednesday.
The quizzes will test how well you have learned the concepts and methods of the assigned practice homework problems. The quiz questions will be closely related to, but never identical to, the online homework problems. Within this course, two problems are considered to be effectively the same if the difference between the two are the values of input variables, or if they ask to solve for the same variable. The problems may be restructured to provide guidance, allow awarding of partial credit, and discourage memorization of a solution formula.
There will be two questions on each weekly quiz. One question will come from the weekly homework set. The second question will come from the extra recommended problem set that will be posted along with the regular homework problem set on the on-line homework system. (See 3.5 Homework for more details).
For these quizzes you are expected to do the homework problems on your own, without any notes or other help (i.e. there are no outside formula sheets allowed for the quizzes!). In solving the homework, you can get help in discussion section, office hours, from tutors and from other students. In the end, however, you must have learned the methods needed to do the problems on your own.
The quizzes will give partial credit (0-5 points). If you set up the problem correctly but make a mistake in solving the problem (such as making an algebraic mistake or incorrectly stating the unit of the solution), you will still get some of the credit for the problem.
You will be allowed to make-up a maximum of three missed quizzes provided that you have a valid documented excuse (e.g. medical note). The make-up quiz must be taken within 3 weeks of the missed quiz (not within 3 weeks of the request for approval of the makeup). There will be no make-up quizzes given after Friday, April 14th, 2017. You have until Friday, April 14th, to request any re-grade or to question any grade discrepancy pertaining to the quizzes. There is a 10% drop factor for quiz scores (see Section 3.2 for explanation). The quiz portion of the course will count for 20 points (of 100) toward the overall course grade.
3.5 In-class H-ITT clicker questions
You can earn bonus points toward the overall course grade by answering the H-ITT questions during lecture. Participation in the H-ITT in class questions is purely optional. You can earn a perfect grade in the course (i.e. 100 points) without any H-ITT bonus points. That said, engagement is known to help learning so your participation should help you learn the material and thus do well in the class. The in-class H-ITT questions begin to count on Tuesday January 17th, 2017. You should get your remote sooner for practice questions that will help you become familiar with the system before the questions start counting toward bonus points.
Participation requires that you purchase the H-ITT remote transmitter associated with the in-class student response system. Information on compatible remotes is found on the HITT Registration Survey. Responses made via this transmitter will be recorded. Just responding will get you 1 point credit for the question. Responding correctly will get you 2 points credit.
To get the credit for H-ITT points, you must register with the auditorium H-ITT system. To register, fill out the HITT Registration Survey at the earliest opportunity and follow the instructions on that page. It is your responsibility to purchase the correct model remote, to observe that your remote is functioning properly, and that you are sending on the correct channel (see HITT Registration Survey for link to instructions for setting the remote channel). It is recommended that you set the channel at the start of each lecture. Lights on the remote and the remote code appearing on-screen will indicate that your answer has been recorded in the system.
You can earn a maximum of 5 bonus points toward your overall course grade by answering the H- ITT questions. This does not mean you can come to the first 5 lectures, then never show up again. This means your total percent of HITT points (say you got 11 points out of 60 possible) is multiplied by 5 to calculate the total HITT bonus points you will be awarded (in this example, (11/60) * 5 = 0.92 HITT bonus points). There is a 20% drop factor for HITT question points.
3.6 Homework
Instructions for accessing the homework system through Canvas can be found on the Canvas course site.
There are two components to the online homework system. One part is weekly assignments that open up on Friday night and are due 10 days later, at midnight on Monday. One of your weekly quiz questions will be closely related to a question from this set of problems, and many of your exam questions will also be related to questions from this set. This first set of problems constitutes a minimal set that you should do to get a modicum of understanding of the course materials (and a grade of around a B). This part will count for 5% of the course grade. There is a 10% drop worst factor for this set of homework. The second part is a set of extra practice problems. They are named “EXTRA PROB” in the on-line homework system. Those will also open on Friday night but will remain open until the end of the semester (there is no due date). The second of your two weekly quiz questions will be closely related to a question from this set.
You should follow appropriate practices of academic honesty when working on problems in Connect. In doing the online homework, discussions with colleagues and/or tutors about methods of posing and solving a homework problem are all encouraged. Using a formula that is specific to the problem, derived by someone else to input answers is cheating. Even if you worked through a formula with classmates, you will still benefit from re-deriving the result on your own. Remember that during quizzes and exams you won’t have the opportunity to get help from anyone else. Treat the homework as practice for that: derive, on your own, any result that you submit.
If you are unsure whether an action constitutes academic fraud, ask the lecturers for clarification before pursuing it. Failure to seek clarification does not provide any excuse or mitigating factor when dealing with academic fraud. The protocol for dealing with academic fraud in this course are detailed in Section 9, “Honor Code”.
4. How to succeed in this class
- It is expected that a successful student will invest at least twelve hours studying and problem-solving per week outside of class. Do not expect a good grade if you are not prepared to work this much.
- Read the assigned chapters before coming to lecture. The importance of this cannot be overemphasized.
- Work as many problems as possible on a weekly basis; the main homework set represents the minimum recommended problems to study. Go to instructor’s and discussion leaders’ office hours for individual help (this can be highly effective and should be regarded as free tutoring; make use of it!).
- Keep up on a regular basis; cramming doesn’t work for learning physics.
5. Office Hours
You are encouraged to take advantage of any of the available office hours from any of the instructors and TAs for the course; you do not have to restrict yourself to your specific TA. The available office hours are:
| Period | Time | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 9:35-10:25 | |||||
| 4 | 10:40-11:30 | Prof. Ray | ||||
| 5 | 11:45-12:35 | Prof. Rinzler | Prof. Rinzler | |||
| 6 | 12:50-1:40 | Colin | Prof. Ray (1 - 2 pm) | Colin | ||
| 7 | 1:55-2:45 | Shinjini | Shinjini | |||
| 8 | 3:00-3:50 | Prasanth, Sourav | Sourav | Drew | Drew | |
| 9 | 4:05-4:55 | Prasanth |
5.1 Office locations (all are located in NPB, the Physics Building):
| Name | Office | Name | Office | Name | Office | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sourav Raha | 2060 | Drew Padgett | 2036 | Prof. Ray | 2237 | ||
| Shinjini Basu | 2030 | Colin Barquist | B164 AND B131 | Prof. Rinzler | 2251 | ||
| Prasanth S. | 2044 | . |
6. Attendance Policy
Please consult the official University Policy for Attendance, linked from the UF Registrar’s web site.
7. Honor Code
The UF Honor Code applies to all aspects of this course. It is required that you report any possible infractions to your instructor immediately.
Violations of the UF Honor Code, including any identified online homework related academic fraud, will be processed to the full extent of the Honor Code. If the Dean of Students Office confirms a first violation, the automatic minimum penalty will be a failing grade in the course. Otherwise, the student will be referred to the Director of Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution. According to the Honor Code, a student who receives a course grade penalty is not permitted to withdraw from the course.
The Honor Pledge:
We, the members of the University of Florida community, pledge to hold ourselves and our peers to the highest standards of honesty and integrity by abiding by the Honor Code. On all work submitted for credit by students at the University of Florida, the following pledge is either required or implied:
"On my honor, I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid in doing this assignment."
Full documentation about the honor code can be found at the following link:
https://www.dso.ufl.edu/sccr/process/student-conduct-honor-code/
8. Students With Disabilities
Students requesting classroom accommodation for disabilities must first register with the Dean of Students Office. The Dean of Students Office will provide documentation to the student who must then provide this documentation to the instructor (Ray or Rinzler) when requesting accommodation. You must turn in your paperwork and discuss your accommodations in person to Prof. Ray or Prof. Rinzler, before your electronic Accommodated Test Request (ATR) Form will be approved. The Accommodated Testing Service (ATS) at the DRC will then administer all the exams. You will need electronic ATR forms for exams and for quizzes.
More information about the Disabilities Resource Center can be found at https://www.dso.ufl.edu/drc
9. Counseling and Mental Health Resources
Students facing difficulties completing the course or who are in need of counseling or urgent help should call the on-campus Counseling and Wellness Center (352-392-1575; http://www.counseling.ufl.edu/cwc/).
10. Online Course Evaluation Process
Students are expected to provide feedback on the quality of instruction in this course based on 10 criteria. These evaluations are conducted online at https://evaluations.ufl.edu. Evaluations are typically open during the last two or three weeks of the semester, but students will be given specific times when they are open. Summary results of these assessments are available to students at https://evaluations.ufl.edu/results.
Appendix: Course Schedule
The detailed course schedule can be downloaded here
Course Summary:
| Date | Details | Due |
|---|---|---|