122 Policies
A. General
The course during this Summer Session commences on Tuesday, May 31 and
concludes on Thursday, June 30. There are no Monday sessions and each
section will have an additional six days on which it does not formally
meet. Four of these days are reserved for "make-up and final interviews"
as described below. A schedule of experiments and meeting dates is
distributed with this Syllabus. Laboratory Sessions are scheduled on
Tuesday - Friday from 10:40 AM until 12:30 PM or from 12:40 PM until 2:30
PM. IMPORTANT NOTE: NO FOOD OR DRINK IS ALLOWED IN THE PHYSICS LAB ROOMS.
Help-Study sessions are for the students' benefit in gaining assistance
with the conceptual and procedural basis of an experiment. The
Help-Study Hall (PSH-462) will be staffed by the Instructor and Teaching
Assistants from 11:10 until 3:00 PM each day except on PHY-121 examination
days (June 7, 15, 23, and July 1). Teaching Assistants will not otherwise
keep office hours except by appointment, but will alert their respective
sections to the hours which they will be present in the Help-Study hall.
However, assistance may be solicited from any member of the course staff
on duty.
B. Laboratory and Grading Policy
There are six experiments scheduled for the term. In order to obtain a
passing grade (D or better), a student must have completed five of these.
AN "A" GRADE REQUIRES COMPLETION OF ALL SIX.
The laboratory format is based on cooperative learning. Students will work
together in teams of three or four. Teams will be organized by the section TA
at the beginning of each set of two experiments; thus, during the term each
student will have three sets of teammates.
Your personal grade for each lab will consist of three parts:
(1) the team write-up of the lab, 65 points, (2) the team
performance on the lab interview, 30 points, and (3) your
personal performance at the lab interview, 5 points. Part 1,
the team write-up of the lab, will consist of the data, the analysis,
and the conclusions, which must be prepared prior to the interview
in an acceptable format (see below under PRESENTATION OF RESULTS).
This team write-up must be presented at the beginning of the
team interview; if your conclusions are not reasonable, your
team may be sent back to your lab table to reconsider the lab
analysis.
During the team interview, Part 2 of your personal grade, each team
member will be asked one or two questions. Questions are asked to the
individual team member, not to the team as a whole, and each individual
must answer ALONE without prompting from other members of the team; so, no
matter how you decide to divide up the tasks of the lab among your team
members, it is the RESPONSIBILITY OF THE TEAM to make sure that
every team member knows all the relevant points of the lab before the
interview begins. Part 3 of your personal grade (5%), depends on
your individual performance on your question (or two questions) during
the interview.
Roughly, in the interview and on the team write-up, major issues or
questions are worth 10 points and secondary or smaller
issues are worth 5 points. For example, though it is
not the purpose of the lab, in the course of the first lab everyone
should learn to use a vernier caliper. Failure of a team member to
demonstrate this skill properly during the interview would cost the team
about 5 points (plus the individual would lose the 5 points of his or
her personal grade). Another question that might be asked for
the first lab is, given a data set, find the standard deviation and the
absolute error or uncertainty in the mean value. Learning this skill is
a primary goal of the first lab and failure to demonstrate this skill in
the interview would cost the team about 10 points (plus the individual
would lose the 5 points of his or her personal grade). Similarly,
in the team write-up for the first lab you are required to propagate errors
in measurements of length into errors in volume. Failure to clearly
demonstrate correct error propagation in your written analysis (or in
the course of the interview) would cost the team about 10 points. On
the other hand, smaller mistakes, like failing to properly label axes on
graphs or giving a final answer with relative error instead of absolute
error, might cost only 5 points or less.
Your final lab grade will be the average of your six personal lab grades
with:
A >= 90
B 80-89.9
C 70-79.9
D 60-69.9
E < 60
The plus-minus grade scale will be used; but the plus-minus cutoffs
will depend on the final distribution of grades (for example 87.6-89.9 would
be a typical range for B+). Completion of less than five labs
is an automatic E.
C. Data Recording
Data are to be recorded in ink on 8 1/2 X 11 quadrille
sheets (5 X 5). Team members should share the cost of a pad of
quadrille paper. These are to be no erasures or "white-outs". Errors
are to be lined out. At the end of each laboratory period or the
conclusion of the experiment, each data sheet is to be dated and initialed
by all team members and section TA. Data should be recorded in tabular
form with well-labeled columns, or otherwise distinctly entered onto the
data sheet. The data may be transferred to computer spreadsheets
for analysis if the team so desires. For your own protection, you may
wish to make at least one photocopy of all signed data sheets
(it is certainly a bad idea to have only one copy of your data).
D. Presentation of Results
Under the interview structure and in light of the summer's compact
schedule, no individual formal written lab reports are
required. However, the data are to be analyzed, with full attention
to experimental and statistical uncertainties (except when explicity
excused) and the results are to be presented in tabular and/or graphical
format as appropriate. There must be a clearly written
description of the analysis process complete with pertinent equations.
If your calculations are done with a spreadsheet, or with graphical
analysis, you must show one example of each calculation in your
written analysis. BE SURE TO STATE YOUR CONCLUSIONS PROMINENTLY AND
CLEARLY. It is expected that most reports will be handwritten on
engineering paper, but word-processed reports are acceptable. All
these documents, as well as the original raw data sheets (initialed and
dated), are to be presented at the interview.
E. Scheduling of Interviews
Most interviews will occur during the last hour or so of the second day
on which the particular experiment is scheduled (see the calendar schedule
sheet) on a first-come first-served basis. Teams that need to revisit the
experiment and/or repeat their interview can do so in the "MAKE-UP AND FINAL
INTERVIEW" period during the third day of the experiment cycle. Interviews
normally will last no more than ten or fifteen minutes. NOTE that
summer labs 3 and 4 must be completed, including inteview, in two lab
periods.
F. Relation to Lecture
The Department of Physics and Astronomy cannot afford to stock sufficient
equipment to allow all students to conduct the same experiment at one time.
Therefore, it is impossible to coordinate closely the laboratory work
with material covered in the PHY-121 lecture. Consequently, some students
may encounter a concept or physical principle in the lab before learning
about it in lecture. This is not necessarily a bad ordering of the learning
process; many prefer it. On the other hand, some students may wait for a
week after learning the physics theory before doing the relevant
experiments. In either case, it is expected that material encountered
in each course will eventually be reinforced by material from the
other course in such a way as to enhance understanding.