June 21, 2013 (9:25AM)
Dear PHY 231C students,
The help room will be open during its regular hours on Monday, June 24 and Tuesday, June 25. On the day of our final exam (June 26), the help room will be open from 11:00AM until 2:00PM.
Richard Hallstein
June 21, 2013 (9:20AM)
Dear PHY 231C and/or PHY 252 students,
Student Instruction Rating System (SIRS Online) collects student feedback on courses and instruction at MSU. Student Instructional Rating System (SIRS Online) forms will be available for your students to submit feedback during 06/21/2013 - 07/09/2013 or until class grades are posted.
You can find information concerning SIRS at https://sirsonline.msu.edu
You are required to complete the SIRS Online form OR indicate within that form that they decline to participate. Otherwise, final grades (for PHY 231C and for all courses using SIRS Online) will be sequestered for seven days following the course grade submission deadline for this semester.
Rating information collected by SIRS Online is reported in summary form only and cannot be linked to your individual responses. Your anonymity is carefully protected.
Richard Hallstein
June 19, 2013
The final exam will be on WEDNESDAY, June 26 at 3:00PM.
If your last name is alphabetically between AAA and NOV, your exam is in Biomedical and Physical Sciences Building (BPS) room 1410.
If your last name is alphabetically between NOW and ZZZ, your exam is in Biomedical and Physical Sciences Building (BPS) room 1415.
Some streets in and around the campus are closed for construction, so you should allow extra time to get to the exam location.
The exam will be handed out promptly at 3:00PM; students arriving after 3:00PM will not be permitted to enter the room until after the students who arrived promptly have started the exam.
The exam is cumulative and will cover everything in the course. It will be based on the readings, the online lectures and the homework. Some of the problems will be conceptual in nature and some will have numerical answers. There are 100 possible points on the exam. Roughly one-third of the points on the exam will come from the material covered prior to the midterm exam. The other two-thirds will come from the material we covered after the midterm exam.
There will be a seating chart on the screen at the front of the room and you should sit in the row designated by your last name. Sit only in even numbered seats; students seated in odd numbered seats will have to move before the exam is handed out.
The exam is closed book, but you may use TWO 8-1/2 inch x 11 inch or smaller sheet of original hand-written notes and equations. You may use both sides of your note sheets.
You should bring a few sharpened number 2 pencils, your student ID (or driver's license) and a calculator (graphing calculators are OK). However, the use of cell phones, PDAs or computers for any reason is NOT permitted. Pencils and calculators will NOT be provided. Also as a courtesy to your fellow students, you should turn off all cell phones and pagers before entering the room.
When taking the exam, all baseball caps or brimmed hats must be removed or turned backwards. Furthermore, all caps or hats covering the ears must be removed.
When you enter the room, pick up a bubble sheet and sit in the row assigned to you based on your last name (seating assignments will be displayed on the screen at the front of the room). Sit in only odd-numbered empty seats, filling seats from the side of the room opposite the building’s atrium first. The only exception to sitting in odd-numbered seats is left handed writers may sit in seat number 22 on a first come-first serve basis, but you must sit in your designated row.
The exam will be handed out once all students arriving promptly are in their assigned rows. DO NOT open the exam until you are told to do so by an instructor or TA. You can however, complete the student information section of your answer sheet. Make sure you include your student ID number and your name on the answer sheet. Make certain your exam has your name and picture on the cover sheet. If it does not, you have the wrong exam. When you are finished with the exam return both your answer sheet and your exam to an instructor or a TA.
You will have two hours to complete the exam.
The cover page for the exam will contain the same information as was displayed on the cover page for the midterm exam. There are a total of 25 problems; some of them are multi-part totaling 30 questions on this exam.
Here are some study suggestions: review the readings, online lectures and the homework problems; make a good sheet of notes for the exam; modify your note sheet you used on the midterm exam as needed to cover the material from the first part of the course; use your note sheets to solve the practice exam problems before looking at the solution videos; even if you correctly solved the practice exam problems, watch the practice exam solution videos; and modify your note sheets as need.
There are now four sets of practice exam problems available to you in Lon-Capa in the Practice exams folder. If all four practice exams are not showing up, you need to log out of Lon-Capa and re-login.
Best of luck on the final exam,
Richard Hallstein
June 3, 2013 (12:30PM)
You can now view your midterm exam and your score in Lon-Capa. To see your score, select: "View current problem status and grading information" from the main menu. Next to MIDTERM you will see your total points out of 50.
As stated in the syllabus and in earlier emails, you may be able to improve your exam score by completing the correction exam.
It is your overall score on both the correction exam and Friday's exam which determines your bonus added to Friday's score; so complete all problems on the correction exam (not just the ones you answered incorrectly last week)!
If a correction exam score is higher than Friday's score, then 30% of the difference between the correction exam score and Friday's exam score will be added to Friday's score as a bonus. For example, if Friday's score is 40 and the correction exam score is 50, then 0.3*(50-40)=3 points will be added to Friday's score for an exam total of 43 points. So, 43 points will be used as the midterm exam score for final grade calculation purposes. If the correction exam was equal to or lower than Friday's score, then Friday's score will be used for final grade calculation.
The correction exam is a different randomization than Friday's exam. So, just like everyone receives different given values on homework problems, your correction exam and Friday's exam will differ slightly.
To review your version of the exam in Lon-Capa, click on Course Contents. Then open the folder labeled EXAMS. The midterm is inside a second folder labeled MIDTERM. You can view an individual problem on the exam, including your response and the correct response by clicking on the problem.
You can prepare a printout of your version of the exam using the "prepare a printable document"Â option. This will show you how many points each problem was worth. On Friday's exam, you receive credit for every correct response.
If your exam score is not showing up, try exiting Lon-Capa, shutting down all windows of your internet browser and then re-logging into Lon-Capa.
Richard Hallstein
June 3, 2013 (10:00AM)
The correction exam is now open for you to complete as a homework assignment. The correction exam is in a separate folder labeled correction exam. If the correction exam folder is not showing up in lon-capa, exit lon-capa, close down *all* windows of your web browser and then re-login to Lon-Capa.
Only students taking the original exam either here on the MSU campus or off-campus with a proctor will have access to the correction exam.
As with any of the regular homework assignments, you can post discussion on any of the problems and are encouraged to do so. The correction exam is due tomorrow Tuesday, June 4th at 5:00PM. 30% of the *positive* difference between the correction exam score and the original exam score will be added to your original exam score as bonus. The correction exam can only help your score on the exam and under *no* circumstance will your performance on the correction exam lower your exam score. So, it is in your best interest to take this opportunity to add points to your midterm exam score. To get full credit for the correction exam, you must complete all questions -- even those you answered correctly on the original exam.
I should have the results for the midterm by tomorrow afternoon (Tuesday, June 4).
Homework set 6 is due on Thursday, June 6 at 5PM.
Richard Hallstein
May 24, 2013
The midterm exam will be on Friday, May 31st at 3:00PM.
If your last name is alphabetically between AAA and NOV, your exam is in Biomedical and Physical Sciences Building (BPS) room 1410.
If your last name is alphabetically between NOW and ZZZ, your exam is in Biomedical and Physical Sciences Building (BPS) room 1415.
Some streets in and around the campus are closed for construction, so you should allow extra time to get to the exam location.
The exam will be handed out promptly at 3:00PM; students arriving after 3:00PM will not be permitted to enter the room until after the students who arrived promptly have started the exam.
The exam will cover everything through and including online lecture 6 (homework set 5). It will be based on the readings, the online lectures and the homework. Some of the problems will be conceptual in nature and some will have numerical answers. There are 50 possible points on the exam.
The exam is closed book, but you may use one 8-1/2 inch x 11 inch or smaller sheet of original HAND-WRITTEN notes and equations. You may use both sides of your note sheet. If you show up to the exam with a set of notes that are not original and handwritten, you will have to take the exam without notes.
You should bring a few sharpened number 2 pencils, your student ID (or driver’s license) and a calculator (graphing calculators are OK). However, the use of cell phones, PDAs or computers for any reason is NOT permitted. Pencils and calculators will NOT be provided. Also as a courtesy to your fellow students, you should turn off all cell phones and pagers before entering the room.
When taking the exam, all baseball caps or brimmed hats must be removed or turned backwards. Furthermore, all caps or hats covering the ears must be removed.
When you enter the room, pick up a bubble sheet and sit in the row assigned to you based on your last name (seating assignments will be displayed on the screen at the front of the room). Sit in only odd-numbered empty seats filling seats from the side of the room opposite the building’s atrium first. The only exception to sitting in odd-numbered seats is that left handed writers may sit in seat number 22 on a first come-first serve basis, but you must sit in your designated row.
The exam will be handed out once all students arriving promptly are in their assigned rows. DO NOT open the exam until you are told to do so by an instructor. You can however, complete the student information section of your answer sheet. Make sure you include your student ID number and your name on the answer sheet. Make certain that your exam has your name and picture on the cover sheet. If it does not, you have the wrong exam. When you are finished with the exam return both your answer sheet and your exam to an instructor or a TA.
You will have eighty minutes to complete the exam.
We will assign the whole exam again as a homework assignment as a Correction Exam. The Correction Exam is optional. If you don't touch it, you will NOT lose any points from your in-class exam or off-campus proctored exam score. If your performance is better on the Correction Exam than on the in-class exam or proctored exam, then 30 percent of this positive difference will be added to your original exam score. The best strategy is to solve the Correction Exam perfectly to maximize your gain. The Correction Exam will be available Monday, June 3rd at 10AM EDT and will be due on Tuesday, June 4th at 5:00PM EDT. Only students taking the in-class exam or off-campus with an exam proctor will have access to the Correction Exam.
The cover page for the exam will contain the same information as is displayed on the practice exam’s cover page. Some useful information is included on the cover page. Note: the exam cover page contains information for all exams and not all of the useful information listed here is applicable to this exam. There are a total of 11 problems; some of them are multi-part totaling 21 questions on this exam.
Here are some study suggestions: review the readings, online lectures and the homework problems; make a good sheet of notes for the exam; use your note sheet to solve the practice exam problems for this exam before looking at the solution videos; even if you correctly solved the practice exam problems, watch the practice exam solution videos; and modify your note sheet as need.
There are two sets of practice exam problems available to you in Lon-Capa in a new folder labeled Practice exams. The first set labeled Practice Exam 1 is comprised entirely of problems given on exams in previous versions of this course or its traditional equivalent. Only the first seven (7) questions in the second set, labeled Practice Exam 2 are from material you are responsible for on the midterm exam (these are the momentum and collision problems).
If the practice exams are not showing up, you need to log out of Lon-Capa and re-login. I highly suggest log out each time you end a session, otherwise you may miss material added to the course.
The due date for Homework set 6 is Thursday, June 6th at 5:00PM EDT.
Richard Hallstein
May 16, 2013
Dear PHY 231C students,
If you are living or traveling far from MSU on the date of an exam, you can arrange to take your exam with an appropriate proctor at or near your location. The midterm exam is on May 31 and the final exam is on June 26.
You must have a travel time of greater than one hour in order to qualify for an off-campus exam. The deadline for getting me your proctor's information is may 23 at 5PM one week from today for the midterm exam. The deadline for getting me your proctor's contact information for the final exam is June 6 at 5PM. If I do not have your proctor's contact information prior to an exam's proctor arrangement deadline, you will have to take the exam here at MSU at the scheduled time. Proctor arrangement details and the deadline are linked in the exam section of the syllabus.
http://www.pa.msu.edu/courses/2013summer/phy231c/
Richard Hallstein
May 13, 2013
Welcome to the Summer session of PHY 231C.
You are receiving this message because you are enrolled in PHY 231C section 730 or section 731.
I realize this message is long, but you should read it carefully and in detail as it is part of the syllabus and is copied in the announcement section of the syllabus for your reference.
We will cover all material usually covered in a fifteen week course in a little over six weeks. This course runs only in the first summer session starting on May 13 and finishing with the final exam on June 26. In general, there are two homework sets due each week. Every week during the session will require a significant online time commitment with a reliable high speed internet connection. Extensions of the homework due dates will not be given.
There are two exams. The midterm exam and final exam are traditional, multiple-choice paper and pencil exam taken either here on the MSU campus or off-campus with an appropriate exam proctor. On the Monday following the midterm exam, a correction exam will open up in homework mode. This correction assignment allows you to do the same exam again with a different randomization for your assigned values. 30% of the positive difference between your correction exam score and your original exam score is added to your original score as a bonus. The correction exam can only help you – do nothing and your original score stays as-is.
If you are living or traveling far from the MSU campus at the time of an exam, beyond a reasonable commuting distance, or if you are traveling with an MSU-sponsored program, you may be able to arrange a proctored off-campus exam. Your travel time must be greater than one hour to qualify for a proctored exam. If you require a proctor, it is your responsibility to find an appropriate proctor in your area. Arrangements for a proctored exam must be made well in advance of the exam, as such requests made after the deadline will not be accommodated and you will have to take the exam at MSU on its scheduled date. You can find arrangement details and deadlines by clicking on the link in the exam section of the syllabus.
The required text book is Rex & Wolfson: Essential College Physics, Volume 1. It is sold at the MSU bookstore and at SBS on Grand River.
This class will use LON-CAPA. LON-CAPA is a computerized homework and exam management system developed right here at MSU. We will NOT use Angel, D2L or the Mastering Physics add-on to the textbook in this course. Since this is an online class, you are not required to purchase an i-clicker.
Whenever you finish using Lon-CAPA you should *ALWAYS* log out. Staying logged in for an extended period of time will prevent you from seeing any new material added to the course i.e. correction exam, exam results, practice exam problems(i.e. correction exam, exam results, practice exam problems, etc). In addition, leaving Lon-Capa idle for a long time can cause access errors (i.e. getting a message when trying to answer a problem stating the system is not available). No extensions will be given for such preventable errors.
Please visit www.loncapa.msu.edu and log in using your MSU Net ID and password. Select the "PHY 231C, Summer 2013" class. The first item on the top is the syllabus. You can also review the syllabus without logging in to Lon-Capa here: http://www.pa.msu.edu/courses/2013summer/PHY231C/ Read all sections of it carefully. This is the official syllabus of the class.
The next item is a folder containing the lectures for the course. The “Online Lectures” folder contains the lectures specifically designed for this online course; they are in the form of narrated PowerPoint presentations with example problems. A high speed internet connection (i.e. not dial-up) and a computer with the ability to view flash video are required. All of the online lectures for the course are currently available. Embedded within the online lectures are bonus homework questions. These questions are optional and can only help your score in the course. Most of these questions, relate at least in part to the assigned reading and/or the online lecture immediately preceding the question. These questions are programmed in exam mode (multiple choice) with correct/incorrect feedback disabled; the correct answer will be available after the due date. In addition, the discussion board on these bonus questions is disabled and so. Hints and/or solutions to these bonus questions will not be provided.
The next folder will contain the homework for the course. There are homework sets that are due, in general every Tuesday at 5PM and Thursday at 5PM. The first homework set is due next FRIDAY, May 17th at 5PM. All homework sets are currently available, so if you know you have a conflict at some point in the semester, you can work ahead. Additionally, you should not wait until the last minute to do the assigned homework -- extensions on homework will not be granted.
You are encouraged to come to the help room (BPS 1248) with your questions. Our Teaching Assistants are more than happy to answer your questions. Starting May 13, the help room will be open for this course on Mondays and Wednesdays from Noon-3:00PM and 4:00PM-8:00PM; Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:00AM-Noon and 1:00PM-5:00PM.
You are also encouraged to use the discussion board inside LON-CAPA. If you don't understand a problem or you need help, just click on the "Post discussion" link and post your question. If you are seeking electronic help on a homework problem, use the post discussion option. More likely than not, others will have the same question and unlike email, everyone can then benefit from your question and subsequent response(s). If you know the answer to a question, just post your answer. Don't forget: The best way to learn is to teach. (Doscendo discimus).
One TA is assigned to provide online help using the course discussion board during the following hours: Mondays and Wednesdays from 4:00PM-7:00PM; Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1:00PM-5:00PM.
Working and understanding the homework problems is a very important part of understanding the material. While, you can likely find a quick, easy formula that will yield the solution to a homework problem, going straight for this type of solution will not help you learn the material. If you are faced with a similar problem that does not use the same end formula, that quick and easy homework solution would be of little help. However, if you understand the underlying concepts and the process that went in to finding that end formula, that similar problem should not be difficult to solve. Rather than using a quick and easy formula that someone else put the work into finding, a better course to follow is attempting to work the problems yourself after completing the assigned readings and watching the online lectures. Only after an honest attempt at the problems should you seek further assistance via the message board or homework hints included in the homework folder. Yes, this is more work, but my belief in the importance of working through the homework yourself to your success in the course is both emphasized and rewarded by its relative weight in calculating your final grade.
Richard Hallstein
(BPS 1253, (517) 884-5509, hallstein@pa.msu.edu)
Last updated: March 5, 2013