Physics 102 Section 2

Semester Two 2007-08

MWF 9

Peter Beckmann (pbeckman)

Section 2 of Physics 102 follows from Physics 101 with Liz McCormack. The textbook is "College Physics: A Strategic Approach," by Knight, Jones & Field and we will start where Section 2 of Physics 101 ends. We will do the rest of the text although we will skip some chapters and some sections of chapters. Broadly speaking, we will look at (1) matter waves like sound waves (waves that need a medium with mass), (2) light waves (waves that do not use a medium), (3) charge, electric fields, voltage, current, resistance and the like, (4) magnets and magnetic fields, (5) the marriage of electricity and magnetism (motors, generators, dynamos and the like), (6) special relativity, (7) general relativity [me - not in the text], (7) quantum mechanics, (8) atoms and chemistry, and (9) nuclear physics.

The mathematics will be at the level of the text book. For students joining Physics 102 as their first college Physics course, a math readiness exam and answer key is available on the Physics Department website. You can take this exam to see where you stand. (Go to Physics at <http://www.brynmawr.edu/physics/>, then <courses>, then <math readiness . . .>. If you are unable to open a pdf document or if you are unable to print it out, go to Ann Klingensmith in the Physics Office and she will give you a copy.) I highly recommend that you take the exam and score your performance to discover those areas that you may need to review. If you do poorly, you should come and see me and we can devise a plan.

There will be three in-class 50-minute exams, and a three-hour final exam. The three in-class exams are tentatively scheduled for Fridays that end weeks 4, 7, and 11 (of 14). These are 15 February, 7 March, and 11 April. One difference from Physics 101-2 is that the final exam will be a scheduled exam and it will be scheduled early. That is, it will not be self scheduled. The 180-minute final exam will have two parts. Part A will be essentially the fourth 50-minute midterm and Part B will be comprehensive, covering the main principles and results of the course as a whole. The four midterms (three in-class and one Part A of the final) will cover new material not tested on the previous exams.

We will not have weekly graded homework. I will assign several problems each week from the text book and you should make sure you can do them before taking the exams. We will have several recitation sessions each week to make sure that everybody can come to at least two. There will be no Peer Led Instructor for this course. I'm it. I will be very available. I have an open-door policy and I encourage groups to "drop in" for help on the problems or with concepts that come up in class.

The basic grading scheme will be 4 X 15% for the four midterms (three in class and one as Part A of the final exam) and 40% for the comprehensive Part B of the final exam. But there will be perturbations on this to account for the fact that some students do better on subject-specific midterms and others do better on longer comprehensive exams. We will invent a grading scheme that reduces the % on one midterm or on Part B of the final, and so on. We can discuss this in class.

In addition to lectures, a physics laboratory is a required component of the course. You will attend lab on one Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon every other week from 1:00-4:00 p.m. You must attend six lab sessions in order to pass the laboratory component of the course. You must pass the lab in order to pass the lecture course. The laboratory will be run by Mark Matlin (mmatlin) and any questions/problems regarding the lab should be directed to him. The other faculty member in lab will be David Nice. Graduate teaching assistants (Pete Maenner, Joe Croman and Don Fahey), as well as undergraduate assistants, will be present in lab to help you. The lab should be fun. You should enjoy it. If you don't, you could come and tell me.

Let me list some goals of Physics 102. First, I will try to convey the idea that physics, indeed all of science, like the humanities and the arts, is very much a human endeavor. Good frontier physics requires imagination, insight, and a faith that for whatever reason, the physical universe is a beautiful and inherently simple place. One makes the assumption that the universe is understandable. Second, we want to learn at least some of the language that physicists use to model the world. One aspect of the language is mathematics. The relationship between English (or French, Swahili, Spanish, etc.) and mathematics is a fascinating study. As far as we know, we did not need or use sophisticated mathematics to kill woolly mammoths or to raise families in caves. It's not surprising we are not naturally (i.e., genetically) disposed to its use. A third goal is to attempt to unify the seemingly diverse phenomena in nature. To the casual observer, physics is a set of individual, complicated, unrelated subjects. This is indeed an unfortunate irony since the goal of those of us whose first love is studying the subject on a frontier is to bring these very different parts into a whole. Fourth, we have the very practical goal, and I hope an enjoyable one, of explaining many phenomena experienced in our everyday life. Fifth, I shall make a very serious attempt to put physics into the context of a liberal arts curriculum since I firmly believe that this world would be a better place and each of us happier individuals if we learned the basics in lots of human endeavors. Thus, in a sense, a goal of the course is that one ought to be comfortable with the Science section of the New York Times or the Science for the Citizen section of Scientific American or other similar publications. My pedagogical philosophy is that people do art, literature, science, and mathematics using the same set of intellectual skills. Indeed, the Physics Department helped pioneer College Seminar at Bryn Mawr.

Welcome aboard and enjoy the journey.