P114 syllabus

Physics 114 – General Physics

Spring term 1999, University of Rochester

Information, Syllabus, and Schedule

Physics 114 is the continuation of Physics 113. The topics of electromagnetism, light, optics, relativity, quantum mechanics, atomic physics, and nuclear physics will be covered at an introductory university level. Students are assumed to have a working knowledge of calculus and the material covered in P113. The course is designed for science majors who are not majoring in physics or engineering.

Course instructor:

Prof. Steve Manly e-mail: manly@nsrl.rochester.edu

Phone: 275-8374, 275-7007 (can leave message)

Office: B+L 203E

Office hours – Tuesday and Thursday 1400-1600 and by appointment. Adjustments in office hour times will be announced in lecture, as necessary.

Course information:

One place to start is the class web site, http://128.151.96.86/class/.

Lectures:

Hoyt Hall, Tuesday/Thursday 1230-1345

Workshops vs. recitations:

We will institute a prototype of the "workshop" system in P114. This is the first use of the system for a physics course at the Univ. of Rochester. The prototype will consist of up to five workshop sections of eight students each. Only students interested in participating will be assigned to a workshop. If more than 40 students are interested, a completely random selection process will determine those who will take part in the workshops. All other students will be assigned to a recitation section. Assuming things work as planned, all students will benefit from this pilot program.

Recitation and workshop times will be announced during the second week of class.

Recitation instructors:

Eric Page, epage@pas.rochester.edu, 275-0339

Alexi Constandache, alexc@pas.rochester.edu, 275-0339

Stephanie Sublett, ssublett@astro.pas.rochester.edu, 275-8553

Workshop leaders:

TBA

Help room:

All students in the course can drop by for help during the office hours posted by any of the recitation instructors. More details will be announced in lectures.

Laboratory:

The laboratory must be passed in order to pass this course. The laboratory grade will be averaged in as 12% of the lecture grade. All questions regarding the laboratory should be addressed to Professor Bigelow.

Homework:

The timing of the problem sets will be announced during the second lecture. We will initially use a conventional written/graded homework system. We may use some CAPA problems as the semester progresses

You MUST set up each problem and do the mathematics yourself! After you work at a problem for some time without success, go to a TA for help during office hours or a recitation. If you plug and chug using someone else’s equation, you will do very poorly in this course. The exams will not be CAPA-like. They will require that you set up and solve each problem!

If you don’t practice this in the problem sets, you will get destroyed in the exams!

Textbooks:

Paul A Tipler, Physics for Scientists and Engineers, Volume 2, Electricity and Magnetism, Light, 4^th edition (1999), W.H. Freeman and Company.
Paul A Tipler, Physics for Scientists and Engineers, Volume 3, Modern Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Relativity, Structure of matter, 4^th edition (1999), W.H. Freeman and Company.
It will be useful to have a general physics text covering introductory mechanics, such as volume 1 in Tipler’s series (used in P113).
A solutions book for students and a study guide are available to accompany the text. I recommend the solutions book. Feel free to buy the study guide. However, I think the important material will be covered in the lecture and textbook readings.

Grades:

Reasonable attempts must be made on all homeworks to pass the course (allowed to miss two, no questions asked). Late homeworks get no grade, but count as an attempt.
The laboratory accompanying this course must be passed in order to receive a passing grade for P114.
No makeup exams will be given except for cases documented by medical certification. Makeup exams may be oral.
Lab grade = 12% of final numerical grade
Homework grade average = 13% of final numerical grade
Two tests during term 20% each = 40% of final numerical grade
Final exam = 35% of final numerical grade
Class and recitation/workshop participation will be considered in determining hairline grades

After each exam Professor Manly will determine how the numerical average (calculated as shown above) corresponds to the letter grade scale. A student’s relative position in the grading is fixed by the numerical grade. Minor adjustments near letter grade boundaries may be made based on class and recitation/workshop participation. There is no curve in the sense that excellent work will earn an excellent grade and sorry work will earn a bad grade. This is true irrespective of the number of students doing excellent or poor work, i.e., there is no "expected" relative percentage of various letter grades.

Schedule and syllabus:

This course schedule is approximate. The exam dates are fixed.

Lecture	Date	Topic	Chapter in Tipler
1	January 14	Introduction, electrostatics, Coulomb’s law	22
2	January 19	Electric field, flux, Gauss’s law	23
3	January 21	Gauss’s law	23
4	January 26	Electric potential	24
5	January 28	Conductors, capacitance, energy	25
6	February 2	Dielectrics	25
7	February 4	Current, Kirchoff’s rules	26
8	February 9	Magnetism, Lorentz force law	28
9	February 11	Magnetic fields, Biot-Savart law	29
EXAM	February 16	0800-0930, location TBA	---
10	February 16	Ampere’s law	29
11	February 18	Induction, Faraday’s law	30
12	February 23	Lenz’s law, inductance	30
13	February 25	Magnetic fields in matter	29
14	March 2	Maxwell’s equations	32
15	March 4	Electromagnetic waves	32
16	March 16	Light, waves, and physical optics	33,35
17	March 18	Geometrical optics	34
EXAM	March 23	0800-0930, location TBA	---
---	March 23	No class	---
18	March 25	Topics in optics	33-35
19	March 30	Origins of quantum mechanics	36
20	April 1	Quantum mechanics	36
21	April 6	Quantum mechanics, H atom	36
22	April 13	Atomic and molecular physics	37,38
23	April 15	Special relativity	39
24	April 20	Special relativity	39
25	April 22	Nuclear physics	40
26	April 27	Particle physics and cosmology	41
Final exam	May 5	Time/location TBA	---