Dr. Viv’s PHY 211A : University Physics I
(Spring 2015-2016 Semester)
Basic Information:
Course website: <http://people.rit.edu/vxnsps/viv.html>
Instructor: Dr. Vivek Narayanan
Email: vxnsps@rit.edu
Office: 14-2327 (Hugh-Carey)
Office Hours: Monday, Wednesday 12-1 pm; Tuesday 2-4 pm on all weeks
except weeks 5,9,13 (exam weeks): 2-6 pm on those 3 Tuesdays; or by
appointment (use e-mail to arrange appt.)
Class Times: Section 08: MWF 10:00 AM-11:50 AM, GOS-3125; Thursday 9:30
AM-10:45 AM, GOL-1435
Section 09: MWF 2:00 PM-3:50 PM, GOS-3125; Thursday 2 PM-3:15
PM, BOO-1440
Exam Times: Three mid-term exams on Tuesdays February 23, March 29,
April 26, from 6:30 PM-7:45 PM, location TBA; Final exam Wednesday May 18,
2:45-4:45 PM, BOO-1350
Lab make-up: Thursday 5:00-8:00 PM, GOS-3178; John Collini (TA); Weeks 214 (no make-up possible on week 15); NO MAKE-UP ON March 24 (Spring
Break)
Grading:
Quizzes (4%):
One quiz will be given every Thursday during the first 15 minutes of class, followed by discussion,
another 15 minutes. Quizzes will be in a multiple choice format. Every quiz will have seven questions of
which 5 will be scored. (So, it is possible to score a grade of 7 out of 5.) Quizzes are patterned after the
practice quizzes on the course website (see top line in Basic Information above for the course webpage
URL). These quizzes are essential for your success in the multiple choice portions of exams, and they also
help you solidify your conceptual understanding of physics. The lowest TWO quiz scores shall be
dropped from grade considerations.
Online Homework (9%):
14 assignments on mastering physics plus (an optional, extra credit) review assignment. Each HW will be
due 11:59 PM Tuesday of weeks 2-16. Each assignment will have 6 regular questions which may include
tutorials, and 2 extra credit questions of some difficulty. You lose 10% for being late each day past the
deadline, for a maximum penalty of 50%. So, it is theoretically feasible to score 50% on HW by doing all
of it on the last day of the course, although this is not a recommended strategy for obvious reasons! Use
hints on the course website to help you do the HW. If you are stuck, bring your work done thus far
written out neatly in a journal in order to properly and efficiently seek help during office hours. Doing
the HW is integral to your success in the free response answer part of the exams. None of the
assignment scores will be dropped.
Paper Homework (3%):
Every Friday, a paper homework with ONE question will be handed to you, either as a problem from the
activities manual, or a problem created by the instructor and/or described in the class notes. Hints will
be provided as necessary on the question sheet itself. This paper HW will be due on Wednesday,
beginning of class. Details of work done must be shown, and all steps justified. This HW is a group effort--although you are not required to have the same group of two or three that you form for the
recitations, you are strongly urged to keep the same groups for ease of interaction. The idea behind the
paper homework is to get you used to presenting your work properly so that you do well when you see
similar problems in tests and exams. Model solutions will be put up on my website for your reference.
The paper HW will be graded on a semaphore grading system, with possible 0, 3, 4, or 5 points per HW
assignment. The lowest TWO paper HW scores shall be dropped from grade considerations.
Workshop: Labs (15%):
Report write-ups are due one week after performance of the lab, at class beginning. Any lab submission
that occurs afterward (with the exception of make-up labs) will be scored 20% down. Lab make-ups
along with reports are due no later than two weeks of the lab’s having been performed in class. The
nature of each lab report will differ based on instructions issued in class at the time of the lab’s
performance. When doing make-up labs, please be sure to look at my online notes to see if I have made
modifications or additions to the suggested activities in the Activities Manual. The lab TA during the
make-up lab sessions will not know about these modifications! ONE of the lab scores will be dropped.
Workshop: Recitation (4%):
These grades are meant for group work on a set of one to three problems after the quiz on the Thursday
class. I will provide the rough outline on the board after a brief period of discussion; you will supply the
details. At the end of the class, each group of three students will bring to me their work and receive
their grade of # (5 points), ♮ (4 points), or ♭(3 points). If you should run short on time, I’ll allow you to
submit the recitation in class at the beginning of the Friday class the following day. Any person absent
shall be noted as such by the group and will be assigned a zero grade, unless they previously excuse
their absence for medical reasons. Students may leave as soon as they are done with the problems and
submit their effort. You may seek my and the TA’s assistance at any time during the process of writing
up the solutions. Model solutions will be put on the website for future reference. The lowest TWO
recitation scores will be dropped from grade considerations.
Midterm exams (15% x 3):
There will be three midterm exams on Tuesday evenings, from 6:30-7:45 PM of academic weeks 5, 9,
and 13. Exam venue and syllabus information will be given to you no later than Fridays of weeks 4, 8,
and 12. All exams are common to all sections of the course. However, midterm exams will be
individually graded by each instructor using a rubric that will be adhered to strictly by all instructors to
keep things uniform across sections.
Exam make-ups: It is possible to make up midterm exams. Just fill out the exam make-up form on the
course website and submit to Ms. Cynthia Drake (Cindy) of building 76 (Carlson). She will make the initial
determination, and pass the form on to the department chair, who will relay to me and the student the
final decision. Time and place of the make-up exam shall be decided by the instructor and the student
on departmental approval. There will not be a make-up for the final exam. If you were to miss the final
exam but have all other components in place, you could discuss the possibility of receiving an
Incomplete grade on the course.
Final exam (20%):
Comprehensive, commonly set final exam with common grading. Final exam percentage score will
replace, if it is advantageous to you, the lowest percentage score of a midterm exam. There is no makeup possible for the final exam. Your final will be on Wednesday May 18th , from 2:45-4:45 PM.
Extra Credit policy:
There are possible extra credit opportunities arising from the two extra questions in every quiz, two
extra questions in each online HW assignment, the (optional) review online assignment, and some lab
extensions or modifications. The goal of these is to enable students to get as many points as possible
outside of the tests and exams, and learn physics at the same time! In order to ensure other sections are
not at disadvantage, I will place a cap of 35% on the combined scores of Quiz, Homework (online +
paper) and labs. You may do extra credit over and above this, but it will not increase your grade further
than 35%. Since as a student you have other courses to study, decide if it is worth your while to do too
many of these extra credit parts. Do not expect extra credit to help you with a poor exam performance!
The only reprieve available there is the replacement policy of one of the midterm exams by the final
exam. Nor will doing more than the necessary extra credit influence me in assigning letter grades.
Letter Grades:
100--90% A-type (ranges from A to A-); 89--80% B-type (ranges from B+ to B-); 79--70% C-type (ranges
from C+ to C-); 69--60% D; 59--0% F
These cutoffs indicate what is needed to earn one of the letter grades within each type. Finer-grained
divisions in the A, B, and C ranges will only be determined after a careful analysis at the end of the
semester.
Gradebook: At any given time, you may calculate your grade in this course using information in the
MyCourses Gradebook (this shall be the only way in which I shall be using MyCourses). Your TA will
grade and enter quiz and lab scores, and I’ll grade and enter the recitation, paper HW and exam scores,
and upload the automatically calculated online Mastering Physics homework score ONCE (at the end of
the course, on Week 16). Grade adjustments, dropping of lowest scores, and replacements of lowest exam
by the final exam shall be done using the gradebook during week 16-17, and you will be sent e-mail
announcements asking you to check that the various grades that you received have been accurately
entered. Bring any errors and discrepancies in grade entry to both my and the TA’s attention. E-mailing
just one of us inevitably will cause delays in addressing the problem.
Required/ Recommended Materials:
1. Mastering Physics HW software for Young and Freedman’s 14th edition of University Physics. The
course code for this course will be DRVIV211SP16. Once enrolled, please do the “Introduction to MP”
assignment for some free points!
2. University Physics I and 1A Activities Manual packet (shrink-wrapped and 3-hole-punched from
Barnes and Noble @ RIT bookstore). This manual shall be extensively used in class for everything from
practice problems to lab activities. Buy sooner rather than later! Keep a file binder for this and to add
handouts and other material I hand out to you as the course progresses. (Buy a 3-hole punch for easy
filing.) Get the one that says Effective Fall 2015 at the bottom of the first page.
3. (Strongly Recommended) Some sort of calculus based physics textbook, if not (the first volume of)
University Physics 14th edition of Young and Freedman, then something equivalent, like an older edition
(I myself only have the 12th edition and find nothing much changed in the 13th or 14th editions, and the
older editions can be bought for literally the price of a pizza from an online used book vendor!), or for
that matter your own parents’ books when they did engineering! The physics we are going to learn in
this course has not changed much in the last 300 years. Only the fancy technology and exciting new
applications of the old physics have changed. I personally would not do this course without some sort of
book, or at least an online source like an e-book or a free download. Contact the RIT bookstore (or any
other place) for the many ways in which they can sell you various packages, and as always, caveat
emptor. Note that only the latest textbook edition will be used to determine the online homework
problems in Mastering Physics each week.
Approximate Course Topics Timeline:
Topics covered will be from chapters 1-16 of the 14th edition of Y&F, not necessarily in chronological
order:
Week 1 (Preliminaries, chapter 1)
Week 1-2 (Kinematics, chapters 2, 3)
Week 3-4 (Forces, chapters 4, 5)
Week 5-6 (Work and Energy, chapters 1, 6, 7)
Week 7-8 (Impulse and Momentum, chapter 8)
Week 9-11 (Rotational Motion, chapters 1, 9, 10, 11)
Week 11 (Universal Gravity, chapter 13)
Week 12 (Oscillations, chapters 11, 14)
Week 13 (Waves, chapter 15)
Week 14 (Sound, chapter 16)
Week 15 (Finish up; course review)
Policies:
1. No food and drink in class. You may step outside and stand by the door as you consume (nonalcoholic) beverages.
2. Cell phone use in class will not be permitted for texting, social media, etc. However, you are allowed
to use your device as a level, stopwatch, or for other lab measurement purposes, such as recording data.
RIT will not assume any responsibility for lab use of your cellphone that results in damage or destruction
(such as dropping it from a great height to determine acceleration due to gravity).
3. Cheating in weekly quizzes and in exams will lead to various disciplinary proceedings including being
expelled from RIT. Homework and recitations may be done collaboratively; in fact you are encouraged
to form study groups for homework and to prepare for exams.
4. Lab reports are done in groups of not more than 3 and no fewer than 2. Each person will contribute to
the overall report. Any exceptions are to be reported to me or the TA and scores shall be adjusted to
reflect lack of work by a group member.
5. Prepare to spend significant amount of time outside of class (multiply class time by a factor of at least
1.5) to digest theory material from the textbook, to attempt homework, to prepare lab reports, and to
study for quizzes and exams.
Enjoy the course! We will follow a novel blend of theory, guided and mentored practice problems with
frequent discussion, and labs closely integrated to the lesson plan. Such a “studio workshop” approach
has been demonstrated to be more effective at delivering instruction than the traditionally separated
large lecture, smaller discussion sessions, and independent laboratory components of the larger
universities.