General Comments

My goal is to provide you with as many opportunities as possible for adding credit...and to try to stimulate your thinking about the material.

The course grade will be determined from a total of 305 points.

Note: grading is "on the curve" - there is no absolute percentage for particular grade boundaries.
ITEM points approx percent
journal introduction + first entry 7
  13 weekly entries @7pts per 91
  conclusion + last entry 7
105 34%
quizzes
12 quizzes given, @5 pts per: 2 eliminated
50 17%
take-home midterm short answer questions
40 13%
final short answer questions
40 13%
book review/
movie review		 Total sum equals 20 points. Must come from a book or a book plus movie(s) review. Books come in three denominations: 10, 15, or 20 points depending on the difficulty of the book. Movies are all 5 points. See the detailed instructions in "assignments" section.

Example: you read a 15 point book plus review a movie...you got 20 points. Read a 20 point book and review a movie, you got 25 points, 5 extra . Can review up to 2 movies. Good deal, right?
20 6%
biography ~10 page paper on a particular physicist, emphasizing his/her contributions to the Research Programmes of their day (following the discussion of Lakatos' Philosophy of Science from the "Scientific Knowledge" lectures) Sometimes there are important collaboratoins between physicists. If two of you would like to write a joint paper, see me and we'll figure out a good pair of subjects.

or...an experiment in a WiKi site of biography. Up to 5 students can participate. stay tuned.
40 13%
instructor class participation; blog participation; office hours participation; professor discretion
10 3%
TOTALS 305 100%



Detailed instructions for each assignment will be posted at assignments. Here is a brief summary of what they are like:

Journal. This is a weekly recap of the previous week's lecture and reading material as if you were explaining it for someone else. Often there will be a specific question to respond to or a simple problem to solve. Typically, journals will be due on Monday at the beginning of class. There are separate instructions for this.

Book Reviews. Just what it says: read and write a detailed review of a pre-approved book on physics. A list of suggestions will be provided and they will be scored for their point value based on their difficulty and length. There are lots of books out there that are just great.

Movie Reviews. There are such good films available from NOVA, BBC, Smithsonian, etc. I've acquired a number of them and we show a different one every Wednesday after class following a short break. Sometimes we'll have food, and always the snack bar is right outside. I can also check VHS movies out to you to watch as extra fun, or if you're unable to make a couple of Wednesdays.

The Papers. These will have separate instructions.

Blogging: From time to time, based on readings, things that come up in class, we'll post a provocative question to our web blog which we'll expect you all to respond to. Hopefully, fights will break out. We'll expect you to participate and we'll be watching! We'll read, participate, antagonize and then judge when you've involved yourself enough to qualify as having participated.This can be considered a first-stage of getting help from your colleagues and/or one of us.

Instructor's discression. I'll be noting blog as well as class participation and attendance.

The tough Stuff. There will be quizzes, a midterm, and a final exam.

Quizzes. These will be in-class and over the reading material and lectures of the previous week or so. They are intended to help you to keep up and will be short answer. If you've done the reading, they will take only a few minutes. I'll throw the lowest (2 out of 12) quiz grades out so you can have a bad day or miss a quiz because of illness or whatever. This way we don't have to talk about that sort of thing!

Midterm and Final. These will be short, factual answers. The Final will be not be comprehensive.