Physics 1ASpring 2015

Wednesday, March - Friday, June 12Lectures: MWRF, 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM, PAB 1425

Instructor

Josh Samanijsamani@physics.ucla.eduOffice: PAB 1-707L

Teaching Assistants

Albert Brownanbrown@physics.ucla.eduOffice: PAB 1-704A

Jonathan Kernesjmkernes@physics.ucla.eduOffice: 1-704A PAB

Exams

There will be two midterm exams and one final exam with the following properties:

Exam Spacetime locationMidterm 1 Monday, April 27, 4:00 PM - 4:50 PM (In class)Midterm 2 Monday, May 18, 4:00 PM - 4:50 PM (In class)Final Monday, June 8, 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM, Room TBD

There will be no make-up exams. If you miss the final exam, you will get an F in the course unless at least one of the

following two criteria is met: (a) A medical emergency or other severe extenuatingcircumstance prevented you from taking the exam. (b) You explicitly make arrange-ments with me at least two weeks before the exam to be assigned an incomplete (I) inthe course. In both circumstances (a) and (b), you will be assigned an incomplete inthe course which means that you will need to take the final exam the next time thecourse is offered and you are registered. Moreover, in both cases (a) and (b) evidenceto reasonably verify your reason for not having taken the exam will be required.

Exams are closed everything except for your brain and a writing utensil. Yes every-thing, including a calculator or any other electronic device except for a wristwatch.

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What will be graded besides exams?

Problem Sets. All problems assigned during a given week will be due BEFORELECTURE BEGINS on Monday of the following week.

How will grades be assigned?

You will be assigned a grade according to the following scheme:

1. Graded materials in the course will be weighted as follows:

Final 35%Midterm 2 20%Midterm 1 20%Problem Sets 20%Participation (clickers) 5%

2. Your clicker grade is determined as follows. The majority but not all questions aregraded for participation only, and some small, randomly chosen subset will be gradedfor correctness. You may drop your 3 lowest clicker session grades.

3. At the end of the course, a weighted average of all of your grades (problem sets, exams,etc.) will be used to assign you a score out of 100. Explicitly, let P, S,M1,M2, Fdenote the decimal score on the participation, problem sets, midterm 1, midterm 2,and final respectively. For example, if you got a 45 out of 55 on midterm 1, thenM1 = 45/55 0.82. The weighted average score in the course will then be

P 5 + S 20 +M1 20 +M2 20 + F 35. (1)

4. I will examine the distribution of the scores as determined in step 3, and Ill decidewhere precisely to put the cutoffs for letter grades. In other words, the class willeffectively be curved.

5. These cutoffs will be approximately determined as follows. The top 25% of the classgets at least an A+,A, or A-. The top 60% of the class will get at least a B+, B,or B-.The top 80% of the class will get at least a C+, C, or C-. The top 90% of the classwill get at least a D+, D, D-. If you are in the bottom 10% of the class, then you willbe at serious risk of failing. Although last quarter only 2 out of 68 students failed.

6. I reserve the right to increase anyones grade after the cutoffs for letter grades havebeen determined provided particular students demonstrated unusual dedication to orimprovement in the course, or I assign extra credit that boosts a students grade.

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(a) Extra credit will not factor into your final weighted average that determines thecurve, but it will be taken into consideration when assigning letter grades. Thisensures that extra credit opportunities only help those students who do them butdont hurt the students who do not.

As an example, suppose that based on steps 3-5 above, Alice gets assigned araw score of 80 which happens to fall in the B+ range determined by the curve.Suppose, further, that to get an A-, Alice needs an 82, and that Alice has done2 points of extra credit, then Alices grade will be increased to an 82 thus givingher an A- in the course. Notice that this grade bump will not have affected thecurve it helps Alice and hurts no one else.

(b) At the end of the term, each student will be assigned an improvement score asfollows:

Improvement Score =2 F (M1 +M2)

2 (M1 +M2) (2)

Essentially the improvement score measures how much a student improved fromthe midterms to the final divided by how much a student could have possiblyimproved. I will look at the distribution of improvement scores, and studentswith high improvement scores will receive grade bumps. Note that this only helpsthose students who improve significantly and will not be used to decrease anyonesgrade.

Textbook

University Physics, Young and Freedman, 13th edition.

Aspects of the course on the interwebs

We will be using a single online platform in the course, Piazza, for discussions, ques-tions, announcements, surveys, lecture notes, problem sets, etc. I have already sentout an email to the class which including the access code for the Piazza site. If youdid not receive this email, then please contact me as soon as possible.

For those who have elected to purchase MasteringPhysics, I will be assigning ex-tra ungraded practice problems on a weekly basis using that platform. Note that Ihave made purchasing MasteringPhysics optional this term, but if you are a studentwho likes to do a lot of practice problems and have access to solutions, purchasingMasteringPhysics is probably a good option for you.

Approximate course concepts

1. Units, vectors, 1D motion

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2. 2D, 3D motion, projectiles

3. Newtons Laws

4. Friction, Newtons Laws

5. Work and energy

6. Energy conservation

7. Momentum, collisions

8. Rotational motion

9. Rotational dynamics

10. Gravitation

The single commandment

I humbly ask you to follow my single cardinal rule:

No cell phones or tablets may be used in class.

My method for enforcing this will just be to kindly ask you to put your electronic deviceaway.

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