Moodle is up to date

Your grades are now up to date on moodle; this includes basically everything to date *except* the papers. I'll read those this weekend ...

Answers to a few common questions:

1. What various stuff is worth can be found in your syllabus.
2. Two labs have been dropped, one homework and one quiz have been dropped.
3. If you were given a "bye" on a lab or quiz for an excused absence, this is not yet included. (In this case, your grade can only be better than what is posted, slightly.)
4. For some of you, the homework is really killing your grade. It is not that most of you are not scoring well - on the contrary, the average for those of you that do the homework is about 75%. The problem is that 20% of you are not doing the homework at all. Turning in a half finished homework is better than nothing, or even just turning in every other one. It isn't too late ... so please, mend your ways. I am available for help.
   

Anyway: if you have questions, just send me an email or grab me after class.

Lab / due dates / grades

Right! My being out of town for nearly a week means I am behind on this thing, and a few updates are in order. They get less urgent as you go down the list, precipitously.

Item the First: we have a shiny new lab for Wednesday, which is all about induction. Basically, we are making a transformer, though the lab doesn't just come right out and say that.[1]

Item the Second: your next exam is not, in fact, this Friday (Halloween). It has been moved one week forward, to Friday, 7 November 2008, during the recitation period. It will be entirely problem-based, and not cruel. It will go something like this: I give you 6 problems, and you pick any 3 of them to solve. The values of "3" and "6" are subject to change as the exam approaches.

Item the Third: your current homework set is due on Wednesday (formerly, this past Friday). Don't get so excited about the extension that you forget to do it ;-) Of course, since we did the remaining problems in class today, this is not so much a problem I suppose.

Item the Fourth: by Wednesday's class period (probably by Tuesday evening) your up-to-date grades will be posted on Moodle. Just in time for Drop Date, on Wednesday. If you think you are in some danger, come see me and we can discuss things.

Item the Fifth: before your exam comes, I will have the missing homework solutions online. I have actually solved all the problems, it is the typesetting that I am a bit behind on ...

Finally: for some reason, I am listening to The Cure as I type this. Did it just become 1992 again? Is this savage time warp localized to my particular living room, or is it widespread? Check your wardrobes carefully before going out ... this could get serious. [2]
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[1] Parenthetically, we are usually doing something much more clever than it looks like at first sight ... this is one case where I think utility of what we are doing will be more apparent however. This is more due to the writeups not being all that clever sometimes, less than it is because you are missing something. Given more time, we should really go back after each lab and make sure why we were doing it was clear.
[2] This is mainly here just to see if you read the whole thing.

Next Homework ...

Here you go.

Due Friday, 24 October. We will try to give you plenty of time in class this week to work on this and your papers.

Wednesday's experiment

We'll measure the earth's magnetic field.

Just FYI: next week, you will have most of Monday's class to work on your papers.

And now, for something completely different:

You will not have a new homework set until this Friday. Why, you ask, is there such a large gap between the homework set you have due today, and the subsequent one?

That is because you are going to write me a paper over the next two weeks. Seriously, a physics paper. It will be fun, I swear.

Instead of just calculating things all day long, you will write me a little paper which puts what you have learned in a broader context, and relates physics to everyday life and your career path. You will have two weeks to research and write these papers, in small groups, and I will devote most of one class period next week to this task.

More details will follow in class. Successful completion of the paper will count as much as two homework sets.

This is a group activity, and only five double-spaced pages ... if you work efficiently in teams, this will not be a lot of work, but has the potential for an easy 'A.' There will be bonus points for the top paper (as judged by me), in an amount to be determined.

Next Homework ...

Here is the next homework set, due on 13 Oct (one week from now). We'll go over a few of these on Wednesday in class to get you started.

While we're at it, here are the solutions to today's exercises. Hopefully I'll be able to get HW5 solutions up in the next few days.

Today's exercises

A few mixed exercises, as review.

Also, your next homework set will come out later today, and will be due next monday.

Finally, I have scaled exam 1 by 5 points uniformly. This brought the average to 76%, and the distribution remained sensible. The larger fraction of you are in the "B" range ... keeping up on the homework and labs will make the difference between an A and a B if you fall in this range.

Homework 6

So, take a break this weekend. Homework 6 will come out on Monday (6 Oct.) and be due the following Monday (13 Oct.).

We are a bit ahead of one of the other sections now, so we will hold off on new problems for now, and probably take Monday to summarize a bit what we've done so far.

Friday's class

Friday, we'll do a short lab on RC circuits, since the quiz will be very simple.

As I mentioned today ... the quiz will be, verbatim, five of your exam questions. Study the solutions, and that is that.

Wednesday's class & lab

We'll start the class today by going over the most recent homework set, due by the end of the day. Number 6 is particularly tricky, we will set that one up in case you are having trouble.

Lecture-wise, we'll learn about RC circuits, briefly about diodes, and end with some more generalities about

We will also do a lab on dc circuits, in which we will learn how to do a proper 'four point' measurement and learn about a new component, the light-emitting diode. The hydraulic analog of a diode is a check valve, if that helps ...