Physics 351 - spring 2015 - University of Pennsylvania
Contents |
Physics 351 : Analytical Mechanics
University of Pennsylvania — Spring 2015
Contact info
Instructor
- Dr. Bill Ashmanskas
- senior lecturer in physics
- telephone: 215-746-8210
- mobile: (I'll write on chalkboard)
- ashmansk@hep.upenn.edu
- office: DRL 1W15
- drop in any time you see my door open (but not MWF before class!)
- I'm generally on campus 9am-6pm M-F
Teaching Assistant
- Tanner Kaptanoglu
- graduate student in physics
- tannerk@sas.upenn.edu
Handouts / PDFs
Homework PDFs, class notes, etc. can be found at positron.hep.upenn.edu/p351/files
Course policies
Grading
Grading policy is designed to motivate you to learn steadily week-by-week, with emphasis on the homework problems. Exam and quiz problems will be based on homework problems.
- 40% : weekly problem sets (most Fridays)
- 10% : completing weekly reading assignments with online feedback (most Mondays)
- 10% : weekly quizzes (most Wednesdays): scaled to min(0.90,raw_score)/0.90
- 15% : midterm exam (Mar 23, in class): emphasize chapters 7,8,9
- 25% : final exam (May 6, 9am-11am): covers chapters 7,9,10,13
- in addition, extra-credit problems can boost your overall score by up to 10%
Homework
- There will be a homework assignment due once per week, at the start of Friday's class.
- The homework problems should take you about 5 to 7 hours to complete.
- If the homework takes you less time than this, you should do the extra-credit problems for an added challenge.
- If the homework takes you much longer than this, consider:
- forming a study group with one or more of your classmates;
- coming to the Thursday evening study sessions for help.
- You should consider doing these two things in any case, because you are likely to gain more from the course by discussing the homework problems with me, Tanner, and your classmates.
- Discussing the homework problems with your classmates is strongly encouraged, but all work that you turn in must be the result of your own thinking. Copying solutions, whether from your classmates or from other sources, is unacceptable, and constitutes academic dishonesty, which Penn takes very seriously.
- If you work through a problem together with a friend at a blackboard, that's great, but you should then both go and write up your own solutions separately (not just mindlessly copying line-by-line what you wrote on the board).
- This works far better if you first try to work through each question on your own, then team up with a friend to trade ideas, then compare your solutions once you've both solved the problem.
- In any case, two of the best ways to learn physics are by solving practice problems and by explaining physics to someone else. Working cooperatively on homework achieves both of these aims. Just make sure that what you turn in is honestly the result of your own reasoning.
- In lieu of a traditional discussion section or office hours, I have reserved classrooms at the following times so that you can work with Tanner, with me, or with each other if you wish:
- Tanner will be in DRL 2N36 on Wednesdays from 5pm-7pm.
- I have reserved DRL 3C2 on Thursdays from 4pm-10pm
- Bill will be there from 4pm-6pm, or until 7pm if there's sufficient interest. Once I leave, you're welcome to keep working there.
- Even if you don't have questions, you can show up just to work with your classmates.
- You're also welcome to contact me any time by email and to stop by my office any time the door is open. On MWF, any time after class is fine, but not before class. On Tu/Th, any time I'm around is fine. I am usually on campus approximately 9am to 6pm.
Late assignments
- It is important to me that you keep up with the course week-by-week.
- Cramming is stressful. Reading, discussing, and gradually assimilating is much more fun.
- I want to hand back graded work promptly so that you can learn from your mistakes before you forget what you were thinking when you made them.
- Therefore, late work will be given reduced credit as follows:
- By "day" I mean class meeting day — Monday, Wednesday, or Friday
- 1 day late: 10% penalty
- 2 days late: 25% penalty
- a week or more late: 40% penalty
- I recognize that your life is busy, and does not revolve completely around this course. For that reason:
- You can ask me once per term for an extension, as long as you contact me by email before the deadline. You can tell me the reason if you wish, but it is not necessary for you to do so.
- To be fair to people who turn in the work on time, I will only waive the late penalty on one assignment per term.
Textbook
- The textbook for Physics 351 is Classical Mechanics by John R. Taylor.
- My current plan is for us to cover Chapters 1-11, 16, and 13.
- The chapters that review material that you have seen before in Physics 150/170 and (for most of you) Physics 230 will be covered only briefly. These are Chapters 1-5 and 11. Even though these review chapters are not a focal point of Physics 351, I include them to take advantage of the coherence of Taylor's book. These chapters also provide a nice review of some math that you have seen in earlier physics courses.
- If you wish, you can go through Chapter 12 (Nonlinear Mechanics and Chaos) on your own for extra credit, by completing a number of Chapter 12's computer-based exercises in Mathematica.
- Textbook reading will be mandatory. Usually you will read each chapter just before we begin the corresponding topic in class.
- This will allow us to spend a larger fraction of the classroom time on solving problems (in place of detailed derivations), since I can assume that you have already seen the material before coming to class.
- I think problem-solving is more fun and interesting than lengthy derivations — especially when you have just recently seen the derivations in the textbook. We'll repeat derivations in class only when they seem worth your while to go through more than once.
- So my plan for much of the classroom time is that after introducing each topic, I will first solve a problem or two for you; then we will work through some problems together, such that you and your neighbors have time to think about the problems on your own before seeing my solutions.
- My aim is that this format will allow you to spend more of the classroom time actively solving problems, asking questions, and probing your own understanding of the material, rather than passively watching me write equations on the blackboard.
Online feedback
- Focusing the classroom time on problem-solving only works if you really read the textbook.
- You will have a reading assignment due each Monday. (More often for the first 1-2 weeks of the term.)
- Most weeks, you will read one chapter. Some chapters will take us two weeks to read. And for this Friday, Jan 16, you have two short chapters to read.
- As an incentive for you to keep up with the reading, the assigned reading has deadlines, is graded, and counts for 10% of your course grade.
- To receive credit for doing each reading assignment, you will fill out an online response at http://positron.hep.upenn.edu/wja/q351/ that involves answering some questions whose answers should be straightforward once you read the chapter.
- Your giving thoughtful answers is helpful in two ways:
- First, it makes it clear to me that you took the reading seriously.
- Second, reading your thoughtful answers helps me to focus the classroom time on the topics that you find most interesting or most challenging.
- Therefore, correct but perfunctory answers will receive 9/10 points.
- In addition to the reading responses, each weekly problem set will have a corresponding feedback form at the same site — http://positron.hep.upenn.edu/wja/q351/
- The "feedback" for a problem set is worth only 20% as much as the feedback for the reading assignments (i.e. 2 points instead of 10 points).
- The main goal of the problem-set feedback is to help me to gauge whether the length, difficulty, and content of the homework is appropriate, so that I can make adjustments as needed.
- Solving homework problems is the most important part of this course. I count on your input to make sure that the assignments are challenging, yet manageable, and are (I hope) fun and interesting.
Workload
- You should expect to spend a total of 10-12 hours/week on this course.
- 3 hours/week in class
- 2 hours/week (about) on the required textbook reading
- 5-7 hours on each week's problem set
Exams
- The final exam (25% weight) will be on Wednesday, May 6, from 9am-11am.
- The midterm exam (15% weight) will be in class on Monday, May 23.
- Instead of an additional midterm exam, we'll have weekly quizzes (10% total weight) at the end of class most Wednesdays, starting Feb 4.
- The plan is to have a total of 10 quizzes, each one about 15 minutes.
- To allow for the possibility that you miss one quiz, your combined quiz score will be scaled up to min(raw_score,0.90)/0.90. So a 90% semester quiz total counts as a perfect score.
- Unlike the quizzes for Physics 150, etc., the quiz for a given homework assignment will be 1.5 weeks after you've turned in that homework.
- Homework #1 will be due on Friday, Jan 23.
- You'll get back your graded HW #1 (with solutions) on or before Friday, Jan 30.
- Quiz #1 (a minor modification of a problem from HW #1) will be on Wednesday, Feb 4.
- The quizzes should not be a source of stress. They are an incentive for you to make sure that you have carefully thought through your own solutions to each week's homework, and for you to look over your graded homework to understand whatever you have missed.
- The weekly quiz is also one more chance for you to spend some classroom time on problem-solving.
- The quizzes are also an incentive for you to go back to review earlier weeks' topics, which will keep the earlier material more fresh in your mind when you need to prepare for exams.
- All exams and quizzes will be closed book, but you can bring a calculator and one sheet of your own hand-written notes. (Either one-sided or two-sided is OK.)
- Writing up a sheet of notes is a good opportunity for review.
- The overall goal of the exams and quizzes is to motivate you to take the weekly homework assignments seriously. All exam and quiz problems will closely resemble problems that you will have already solved on the homework.
- My approach to teaching strives to reward diligence above brilliance. Doing the homework diligently is the best way for you to gain something from this course.
Schedule
The topics for the last few weeks of the semester are subject to change, depending on your interests and on whether we find that some earlier topics require extra time.
| Monday | Wednesday | Friday |
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Jan 14
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Jan 16
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MLK holiday
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Jan 21
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Jan 23
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Jan 26
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Jan 28
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Jan 30
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Feb 2
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Feb 4
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Feb 6
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Feb 9
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Feb 11
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Feb 13
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Feb 16
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Feb 18
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Feb 20
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Feb 23
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Feb 25
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Feb 27
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Mar 2
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Mar 4
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Mar 6
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| — | spring break | — |
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Mar 16
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Mar 18
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Mar 20
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Mar 23
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Mar 25
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Mar 27
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Mar 30
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Apr 1
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Apr 3
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Apr 6
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Apr 8
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Apr 10
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Apr 13
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Apr 15
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Apr 17
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Apr 20
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Apr 22
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Apr 24
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Apr 27
Read fluids chapters from Feynman lectures: v2ch40 and v2ch41 :: questions
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Apr 29
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reading days 4/30 - 5/1; exam period 5/4 - 5/12 |
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extra credit: read ch14 (collisions) and count any ch14 problems you like as XC problems; you can also do any ch16 problems you like; if you read ch14, email me a few short paragraphs summarizing the key ideas. |
May 6 final exam 9am-11am (DRL A4)
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The topics for the last few weeks of the semester are subject to change, depending on your interests and on whether we find that some earlier topics require extra time.