Enginering Physics I
Welcome to the
Enginering Physics I
course, PHY 303K. This page describes the section taught by Professor Vadim Kaplunovsky in Fall of 1999 (unique #55540). Other sections should have their own web pages.
General Information
- Instructor:
- Professor Vadim Kaplunovsky.
- TA:
- Wenjun Li.
- Lectures:
- On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, noon to 1PM, in Painter hall PAI 2.48.
-
- Tutorial (TA) sessions:
- One hour a week. All registered students must sign up for one of the eleven sessions available. Attendence of the tutorial sessions is mandatory.
- Review sessions:
There will be four quizes on Wednesday evenings during the semester and one comprehensive final exam at the end.
There will be no make-up exams for any reason whatsoever. If you miss one quiz, it will not affect your grade, but if you miss two or more quizes or miss the final exam, your grade will suffer.
A student that is unable to take an exam because of illness or other bone fide emergency should notify the instructor as soon as possible; in such a case the instructor will decide on an appropriate remedy. There will be no remedy for students who missed an exam because they forgot or were mis-informed of its time or location, could not start their cars or park them on campus, had dead batteries in their calculators or their pencils eaten by dogs, or any other asinine excuses.
No books or notes will be allowed during any of the exams. A formula sheet will be provided. To preview the formula sheet, click on a format of your choice: PostScript, PDF, TeX source or DVI.
Many exam questions will require calculations. Make sure to bring a calculator to each exam. Before each exam, check your calculator and make sure it works and has good batteries; if it fails during the exam, you are SOL.
The quizes and the final exam will be graded by the same computer that grades the homeworks. However, unlike the homeworks, the exams use bubble sheets for entering the students' answers. Please bring a pencil -- the bubble-sheet scanner does not read ink.
Remember to bubble in everything you write down. Your bubble sheet should have your name, SSN and the version number of your exam pre-printed and bubbled in; make sure this information is correct or your test will not be graded!
More exam-related information and advice is available at http://www.ph.utexas.edu/~vadim/Classes/99f/303K/Exams.html
Textbooks
The main textbook for the Engineering Physics courses (both PHY 303K and 303L) is
Physics for Scientists and Engineers
by Serway and Beichner (5th edition). The older, 4th edition (by Serway) is a good substitute.
In addition, the
Tutorials in Introductory Physics
by McDermott etal. (two booklets:Tutorials and
Homework) are required for the course. The booklets will be available in a couple of weeks.
Syllabus and Schedule
The Engineering Physics courses 303K and 303L are introductory rather than comprehensive. Because of time shortage, some subjects will be skipped. In particular, the 303K course skips Thermodynamics and concentrates on Mechanics (except Gravity and Fluids) and Mechanical Waves. In textbook terms, the 303K course covers chapters 1 through 13 and 16 through 18.
The detailed schedule of lectures, homeworks and exams is available at http://www.ph.utexas.edu/~itiq/303Kf99/init/syllabus.html.
Homework
There will be two kinds of homework assignments in this course: twelve computer-graded sets of calculational problems and six human-graded sets of qualitative questions.
To get yourself started on the computer-graded homeworks, read the student instructions at http://hw10.ph.utexas.edu/studentInstructions.html ASAP. Then register with the homework service (add your name to the computer's roster), download homework #1 and try to answer at least one question by the second class day.
If you have difficulties dealing with the computer, ask the TA to help you; he knows the homework computer service better than the instructor!
The human-graded homeworks are based on the
Tutorials in Introductory Physics. The material covered by these homeworks will be reviewed during the tutorial sessions.
Grading Policy
Original Policy
The grades are based on the combined score compised of:
To allow for unexpected difficulty or ease of the tests, I will wait for the final exam results before setting the brackets for the ABCDF letter grades in terms of the combined scores. In any case, a 90% or better score will earn an A, an 80% or better score will earn at least a B, 70% -- at least a C and 60% -- at least a D. Most likely however, the grading brackets will be more generous. Also, the students with good attendence records will be graded according to more lenient brackets than the students with poor attendence records.
Policy Change
Since the third evening quiz was irrepearably disrupted by the fire evacuation, I shall adjust the grading policy as follows:
Final Grades
For security reasons, your grades are no longer available on-line at this server.
Ultimate grading algorithm and brackets
Note: Slight change in algorithm on December 13. Consequently, a few marginal grades went up while most grades remain unchanged; no grades went down.
For your information, the average grade for students who stayed in class is 2.92; the average for all registered students (conting Q as 0) is2.63.
Last Modified: March 11, 2003
Vadim Kaplunovsky
vadim@physics.utexas.edu