Apr. 27
Dear Students in PHY 231C,
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
post-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' attitudes about
physics. This second survey is untimed and there are no right/wrong responses.
You will get 0.5% extra credit counting towards your grade just for
participating for in each of these optional diagnostics/surveys (if yo do both
it is +1%). 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. You may
participate and receive each bonus even if you did not participate in the
pre-class versions given at the start of the semester.
The survey includes a permission form in which 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
12:01AM Friday Apr 29 and Sunday, May 1 at 11:59PM.
Look for a folder called "Post-course diagnostic" in LON-CAPA inside the PHY
231C class and a second folder called "Post-course Survey".
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.
Thank you very much for taking the diagnostic and the survey!
Richard Hallstein
Apr. 25
The correct number of poits on the two chapter unit on Gravitation; solids and
fluids is 13 points.
To further assist you in focusing your studies, here is the point breakdown of
the questions on the exam by weekly assignment (note: some of these include
multiple chapters):
1D motion: 8 points
2D: 8 points
Force: 11 points
Energy and momentum(two units): 14 points
Rotation: 8 points
Gravitation; solids and fluids(2 units): 8 points (correct total 13 points)
Waves and sound: 4 points
Temperature, thermal expansion and ideal gases: 12 points
Heat: 14 points
Thermodynamics: 8 points
Apr. 22
The final exam will be on MONDAY, May 2 at 8:00PM in Biomedical and Physical
Sciences Building (BPS) room 1410.
The exam will begin promptly at 8:00PM.
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. At least 25% of the points on the
final exam will come from modified midterm exam problems or modified homework
problems/bonus questions from the last two homework sets.
The exam is closed book, but you may use FOUR 8-1/2 inch x11 inch or smaller
sheets 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). 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 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.
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 exams. There are a total of 30 questions on
this exam.
Here are some study suggestions: review the readings, online lectures and the
homework problems; make a good set of notes for the exam keeping in mind the
order of questions on the exam will correspond to the order material was covered
in the course; modify the note sheets you used on the midterm exams as needed to
cover the material from the first thirteen weeks 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. Last, but
not least, review all of the problems from our three midterms and make sure you
know how to solve these or similar problems.
To further assist you in focusing your studies, here is the point breakdown of
the questions on the exam by weekly assignment (note: some of these include
multiple chapters):
1D motion: 8 points
2D: 8 points
Force: 11 points
Energy and momentum(two units): 14 points
Rotation: 8 points
Gravitation; solids and fluids(2 units): 8 points Waves and sound: 4 points
Temperature, thermal expansion and ideal gases: 12 points
Heat: 14 points
Thermodynamics: 8 points
Over the weekend before finals week, a post course diagnostic and a post course
survey will be available. Each of these come with a 0.5% participation bonus
for those who seriously participate. More details will follow next week.
Best of luck on this and all of your final exams, Richard Hallstein
Jan. 29 4:17PM
Dear PHY 231C student,
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. Your note sheet will be checked at least once during the
exam. Any notes other than described in the syllabus and restated here will be
considered a violation of the university's policy on academic integrity. As
such, a non-droppable penalty grade of zero for the exam will be given and an
official report of academic dishonesty will be filed with the university.
Richard Hallstein
Jan. 29 4:12PM
Dear PHY 231C students,
The first exam will be on Thursday, February 4 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 4 (homework
set 3). 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 16 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. Your note sheet will be checked at least once during the
exam. Any notes other than described in the syllabus and restated here will be
considered a violation of the university's policy on academic integrity. As
such, a non-droppable penalty grade of zero for the exam will be given and an
official report of academic dishonesty will be filed with the university.
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).
Sit in even numbered seats only. 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.
The whole exam will be assigned again in the same form 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 as a bonus.
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,
February 5 and will be due on Tuesday, February 9 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. As stated in the calendar section of the syllabus,the first 17
questions on practice exam 1 are practice problems for this first exam as are
question 8, 9 and 13 from practice exam 2. 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 Tuesday, February 16 at 11:59PM. This set is
a long set, so you should get started on it early.
Richard Hallstein
Jan. 15
Dear Students in PHY 231C,
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 0.5% extra credit counting towards your grade just for
participating for in each of these optional diagnostics/surveys (if yo do both
it is +1%). 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 9AM last today,Friday Jan 15 and Monday, January 18 at 11:59PM.
Look for a folder called "Pre-course diagnostic" in LON-CAPA inside the PHY 231C
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 (4/29 through 5/1), a post course diagnostic and a
post course survey
will be given for another 0.5% 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
Jan. 13 (corrected Jan 14)
Dear PHY 231C student,
While the general physics help room hours will start next week on Tuesday, January 19, the PHY 231/231C specific hours will start this Friday, January 15.
The help room/Strosacher Learning center is located in room 1248BPS.
Here are the 232/232C specific hours:
Mondays: 9AM-noon and 2PM-9PM (closed on MLK holiday)
Tuesdays: 9AM - 9PM
Corrected: Fridays: 9AM - noon and 2PM - 5PM
In addition, my office hours for the course have changed and will now be 11AM-noon on Mondays in room 1253BPS or by appointment (I will be here on the MLK holiday).
Richard Hallstein
Jan. 11
Welcome to the spring semester of PHY 231C – the course is now open and available.
You are receiving this message because you are enrolled in PHY 231C 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 1. 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 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 231C, Spring2016" 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/2016spring/PHY231C/ 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 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. No hints or solutions will be provided for these extra credit bonus problems.
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 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 they 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 Tuesdays at 11:59PM. The first homework set is due Tuesday, January 19 at 11:59PM. You should not wait until the last minute to do the assigned homework -- extensions on homework will not be granted.
The next folder contains 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 0.5% participation bonus. Both of these will be available from Friday, Jan. 15 at 9AM until Monday, January 18 at 11:59PM. Absolutely no extensions will be given.
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 posted in the syllabus 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 PHY231/231C will be available. I will send you an email when regular help room hours begin and when we have 231/231C 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 a fellow student’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: January 10, 2016