Welcome to Rutgers!! (for the upperclassmen, Welcome Back!)
This note is very long, but well worth the read. It is packed with
advice that can help you ace physics this year. So please take the
time to sit back and read carefully.
Class starts soon, and we hope you are as excited as we are to get
started. On behalf of the teaching team for Physics 115 that includes
me, the graduate teaching assistants and the undergraduate learning
assistants, we are glad you're here and look forward to learning with
you this year.
Below are links to the course syllabus and the procedures. This
course has many components to it that will take a week or so to make
part of your routine. The sooner you do that the better; we strongly
recommend reading the course procedures before coming to lecture
next Tuesday. We will provide paper copies of both documents in
lecture.
http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~brahmia/115/p11514procedures.pdf
http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~brahmia/115/p11514calendar.pdf
All handouts will be available to print at the course
website: www.physics.rutgers.edu/ugrad/115/
In the Course Procedures document, you will find a list of the required
materials for this course which can be purchased at the Rutgers
Bookstore in Ferrin Mall, as well as online.
As a parent of college students, I empathize with the high cost of
books and online homework systems. As an educator I know that
when used well, they can greatly facilitate learning. Here are my
suggestions for keeping costs down:
The book:
Our textbook is designed to help you develop your abilities to read
and comprehend college level science writing, in addition to preparing
you for the rigor of engineering problem-solving. Given that many
pre-college physics courses focus almost uniquely on problemsolving and do not involve much reading, we consider guiding you to
develop college level reading skills in the physical sciences to be an
important part of our job because it is an essential skill for all
professionals in the sciences. We expect you to use the textbook
differently than you have in other physical science courses – it is not
designed to be an encyclopedic reference book.
You will note that I am an author on our book. Rutgers makes little on
the book when you buy it new, and absolutely nothing if you don’t buy
it new. I make nothing either way, and I prefer that you save your
money and get it as inexpensively as possible. You can buy it used
or rent it, and there are other ways of getting copies, I’ve been told,
so ask your peers. My interest is that you have access to a copy of
the book as inexpensively as possible, and I am not offended nor do I
feel cheated if you get it for free or cheap. If I could do it legally, I
would scan it and post it for you to use. The best I can do legally is to
provide the first chapter online (at the course website), in order to
give you time to find a cheap copy of your own.
I will not ask you to buy an expensive encyclopedic textbook because
there are many good alternative resources to help you develop
problem-solving prowess. There is a link on the course web page for
a free, online ebook that is just as good as all of the encyclopedic
physics textbooks that are commonly used at this level. Many online
resources, like Wikipedia, provide succinct and easy to read
references for problem solving. Learning to use them to your
advantage is part of becoming more expert-like in physics. In
addition, we will make available many free paper copies of these
kinds of books in Serin 130 for anyone who feels that they’d like to
own one, or you can pick one up used for very little money if you have
favorite author. These types of physics books are almost identical to
each other, and they change very little from edition to edition. So the
very cheap 5th edition is almost identical to the $200 13th edition. In
this course we will help you develop your ability to use these kinds of
cheap or free resources effectively.
The online homework:
Although online homework can be aggravating as a student because
of the inherent inflexibility of computers, there is a lot of published
evidence showing that students persist longer in trying to solve
problems with these systems than they do with paper and pencil
alone, which is very helpful in developing basic skills. Practice with
these fundamental kinds of physics problems is an essential
preparation for the more sophisticated open-ended kinds of problems
that we will tackle in recitation and on exams. But online homework
can be an expensive waste of time if you as a student don’t use the
tool effectively. Here are two recommendations to always keep in
mind:
1. Struggle first: We expect, and even hope, that you will discuss
challenging problems with your colleagues but only after you have
read through and struggled on your own for a while. Avoiding the
struggle by getting help on problems too quickly is a waste of your
time.
2. Create and compose alone: When you get help from anyone, you
should always be the person doing the writing. Someone might show
you HOW they do something but you should really insist on
understanding WHY they do it. That way you will be able to create
your own way which will help you with unfamiliar problems, not just
parrot someone else’s way of solving one specific problem. You
should always be able to do a problem from beginning to end with no
guidance before you are ready to submit your answers.
Lastly, we are always in the process of trying to create the best
possible learning environment in this course. In the interest of
improving the course we will be administering diagnostic tests at the
beginning and at the end of the semester in recitation and online to
measure how effectively we are meeting our teaching goals. These
diagnostic tests will not affect your course grade, but we ask that you
participate with full effort.
We'd also like to alert you to the fact that your first online homework
assignment is due Friday of the first week of classes. You can do it
anytime before that but you will not be able to submit it after 11:59
PM on Friday September 5th . Go to webassign.net to get registered
and get started.
1. The course ID for WebAssign (online homework system) is:
rutgers 9870 7696
2. These are the instructions for registering on WebAssign:
http://www.webassign.net/manual/student_guide/t_s_enrolling_
class_class_key.htm
We are looking forward to meeting you soon!
Dr. Suzanne Brahmia, for the 115 teaching team