Physics 200 Course Instructions
Some remarks on the labs and homework:
Lab
- You will need a separate 3-ring binder (1" or 1.5") and some loose-leaf paper for your lab work.
- Ahead of time (usually at the end of the week preceding the one during which the lab will be conducted) there will be a description of the procedure that will be posted on-line using the Blackboard web site for this course. You should make a print-out of that description and bring it to the lab.
- Often there will be a brief pre-lab exercise found in the introduction that is meant to expose you to some essential ideas important to the experiment. You should work out the pre-lab exercise before coming to the lab and submit it with your work at the end of the lab period.
- In the course of working through each lab you will take notes on the equipment and procedure and record certain data on the loose-leaf sheets. You will not be asked to prepare formal lab reports, but your lab notes should be sufficiently detailed to enable you to prepare a formal report. Key results will be submitted by written responses to questions found on worksheets and by graphs and tables that will be created in the course of the lab.
- The lab grade will constitute 20% of the total grade for the course. Your lab grade will be based on the worksheets and on questions that will be part of the exams given during the term. The lab grade will be 70% based on the work accomplished during the lab and 30% will be based on the exam questions.
Theory
Homework: The weekly assignment will consist of two parts. There will be a number of problems to complete and hand in and a number of problems that I will suggest you work through but that you don’t hand in for correction. Feel free to discuss any of these with me. You are encouraged to discuss the homework problems with one another. You will learn more if you try to organize a solution to a given problem on your own, first. The work you submit for grading should be your own in the sense that you have written out a solution in your own words and that you have done your own calculations.
