September 30, 2015
Dear PHY 232C student,
At the end of the courtesy reminder for tomorrow's exam, I inadvertently
entered homework set 4 is due October 14. This is incorrect -- the correct
dates for assignments in the course are in the calendar section of the syllabus
http://www.pa.msu.edu/courses/2015fall/PHY232C/
The correct statement is "Homework set 5 is due October 14 at 11:59PM.
The courtesy reminder also correctly states that tomorrow's exam includes
material from homework set 4.
Richard Hallstein
September 28, 2015
Dear PHY 232C students,
The first exam will be on Thursday, October 1 from 8:00PM until 8:50PM in the
Biomedical and Physical Sciences Building (BPS) room 1410. The exam will be
handed out promptly at 8PM; students arriving after 8PM 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 17B
(homework set 4). 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 a total of 17 separate responses on the exam. 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.
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, 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).
The seat at the far left end of every row is reserved for left handed writers
only. DO NOT open the exam until you are told to do so by an instructor.
However, once the answer sheets are handed out 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 fifty 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. If your performance is better on the
Correction Exam than on the in-class exam, then 30 percent of this positive
difference will be added to your in-class exam score. The best strategy is to
solve the Correction Exam perfectly to maximize your gain. The Correction Exam
will be available in the afternoon on Friday, October 2 and will be due on
Wednesday, October 7 at 11:59PM. Only students taking the in-class exam or off-
campus with an exam proctor will have access to the Correction Exam.
Some useful information is included on the cover page. The cover page for the
exam will contain the same information as is displayed on the practice exam's
cover page. Practice exam 1 is applicable to this exam. You should try doing
these practice problems with a draft of your not sheet, prior to viewing the
video solutions. Even if you have successfully solved a problem, you should
still view the solution.
Note: the exam cover page is for all of the mid-term exams and not all of the
useful information listed here is applicable to this exam.
The due date for Homework set 4 is Wednesday, October 14 at 11:59PM. This set
is a long set, so you should get started on it early.
Richard Hallstein
September 18, 2015
Dear PHY 232C students,
If you are living 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 first exam is on OCTOBER 1..
You must have a travel time of greater than one hour in order to qualify for an
off-campus exam. However, students enrolled in regular classes here at MSU (i.e.
PHY 252) are not eligible for off-campus exams. Students close enough to
attend classes here are close enough to take their exams here.
The deadline for getting me your proctor's information for exam 1 is Wednesday,
September 23rd at 5PM. If I do not have all of your proctor's contact
information prior to the 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/2015fall/PHY232C/
Richard Hallstein
September 9, 2015
Dear PHY 232C student,
The Physics help room (1248 BPS) will have TAs specific to our course starting today, 9/9. The hours are as follows:
Mondays 5PM-8PM
Tuesdays 1PM-9PM
Wednesdays 9AM-11AM and 1PM-9PM
I recommend that you spend at least one hour in the help room each week, preferably working with other students in study groups. The TAs for the course are there to assist you and aid you in working through our assignments. However, this does not mean the TAs are there to solve class assignments for you.
Richard Hallstein
September 6, 2015
Dear Students in PHY 232C,
We are trying to obtain information on the conceptual preparation of our
incoming students for this class. To this end, we have prepared a timed
pre-introductory physics course diagnostic consisting of multiple-choice
questions, which do not require any numerical calculations. In addition, we'd
like to you to participate in a survey meant to gauge students' attitiudes
about physics. This second survey is untimed and there are no right/wrong
reponses. You will get 1% extra credit counting towards your grade just for
participating for in each of these optional diagnostrics/surveys (if yo do both
it is +2%). To emphasize, this is a participation bonus and is in no way linked
to your performance on the diagnostic. Please take up to 50 minutes to answer
these 30 conceptual questions this timed diagnostic, and please, complete the
entire test in one sitting without consulting any reference materials.
The survey includes a permission form in whic you can either consent we use
your responses or decline it. In either case, you can take the survey and
receive the participation bonus.
This diagnostic and survey will be available for you in Lon-Capa to take
between 12AM last Friday and Friday, September 11 at 11:59PM.
Look for a folder called "Pre-course diagnostic" in LON-CAPA inside the PHY 232C
class and a second folder called "Pre-course Survey".. You can click on eac
folder anytime between now and 9/11
Please take your time and read every question carefully. You are not expected
to be able to answer every question on the diagnostic. You submit your responses
just like you do on the third homework problem entitled "How to submit answers
to bonus" in set one. When you answer a question during the diagnostic,
LON-CAPA will not give you an immediate "Correct" or "Incorrect" message. It
will just simply say "Answer Submitted...". You will not have access to your
score, however next week I will send an email to your Lon-Capa mail confirming
your participation credit. You are allowed to go back and change your answer,
if you think you picked an incorrect answer. You will have 20 tries on each
question. All your submissions will be stored, but only the last submission will
be used for each question.
We value your input and want only serious attempts at completing the diagnostic.
If you don't know the answer to a question, then guessing is allowed. However,
simple submission patterns(like AAA..., or BBB...) or rapidly clicking on any
response throughout the diagnostic will be filtered out from the diagnostic or
the survey. Lon-Capa allows me to easily check the time spent on each problem
in the diagnostic. Any students having there submissions filtered out for the
reasons described above will also forfeit the participation bonus.
At the end of the semester, a post course diagnostic and a post course survey
will be given for another 1% participation extra credit for each of them. This
too, will be a participation bonus and not linked to your performance on the
post course diagnostic. Any results produced by this study will not contain
your name or any other personal information about you.
Thank you very much for taking the diagnostic and the survey!
Richard Hallstein
September 1, 2015
Dear PHY 232C student,
Welcome to the fall semester of PHY 232C – the course is now open and available.
You are receiving this message because you are enrolled in PHY 232C section 730 or section 731. Please read this message carefully; it contains a significant amount of important information about the course. A copy is posted in the announcement section of the syllabus.
The required text book is Rex & Wolfson: Essential College Physics, Volume 2. It is sold at the MSU bookstore, at SBS on Grand River and at many online retailers. 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 or d2L whatsoever in this course. Since this is an online class, you are not required to purchase an i-clicker.
Please visit www.loncapa.msu.edu and log in using your MSU Net ID and password. Select the "PHY 232C, Fall2015" 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/2015fall/PHY232C/ Read *all* sections of it carefully. This is the official syllabus of the class and contains information like important dates (exams & homework), bonus point opportunities, homework information, exam information, grading, etc.
The next item is a folder containing the online lectures for the course. All of the online lectures and the associated homework sets are available in Lon-Capa at the start of the semester. 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 and videos of demonstrations. 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. The discussion board on these bonus questions is disabled.
A reliable high speed internet connection is required, as is a computer with the ability to view flash video. The computer will need a current, supported operating system and a browser running HTML5 to use all the options available in the online lectures. There is an inconvenient bug that you would only encounter if you happen to have a Windows computer with (1) a touch screen AND (2) a physical keyboard and/or mouse (including a track pad); in this case the video controls will not function properly in Chrome or Firefox (they’ll play, but rewind and other go to controls will not work), so you would need to use Internet Explorer where all controls function properly. Tech Smith's Camtasia software is used to make these videos. Tech Smith is aware of this bug and hope to have it patched in the future.
The next folder will contain the homework for the course. There are weekly homework sets that are due on Wednesdays at 11:59PM. The first homework set is due Wednesday, September 9 at 11:59PM. You should not wait until the last minute to do the assigned homework -- extensions on homework will not be granted. Within the online lecture folder is a folder containing four sets of practice exams with video solutions.
The last two folders are a timed pre-course diagnostic and an untimed pre-course survey. Both will be available to complete this weekend and both come with a 1% participation bonus.
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. Arrangements must be made well in advance of the exam -- requests made after the deadline will not be accommodated and you will have to take the exam at MSU. For arrangement details and arrangement deadlines, see the link in the exam section of the syllabus.
You are encouraged to come to the Strosacker help room with your questions. Our Teaching Assistants will be more than happy to assist you in finding your way to the answers to our homework questions. However, they are instructed not to simply solve these problems for you. The Strosacker help room is in 1248 BPS and is usually open from 9:00AM to 9:00PM Monday through Thursday and 9:00AM-6:00PM on Fridays. You are welcome to go to the help room during any of its open hours, but there will be designated times when TAs specifically assigned to PHY232/232C will be available. I will send you an email when regular help room hours begin and when we have 232/232C specific hours set.
You are 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. Try to be specific in your request – statements like “help” or “I don’t understand” do not give us any idea about what is giving you difficulty. Do not use email for help on the homework questions. With well over one hundred students in the course, it is simply impossible to answer all potential homework questions individually. Further, more likely than not, others will have the same question and unlike email, everyone can then benefit from your question and the subsequent response(s). If you know the answer to somebody else's question, just post your answer. Last of all, please refrain from simply posting a formula without any context or discussion. Most often, the person posting the formula understands where it came from and would be able to find a similar relationship when it is encountered on say, an exam. Whereas, those using the formula are quite often lost when encountering the similar situation on an exam.
Hope you have a great semester both here and in your other courses,
Richard Hallstein
(BPS 1253, (517) 884-5509, hallstein@pa.msu.edu)
Last updated: August 11, 2015