Office Hours: I will hold office hours according to the following schedule. I hold office hours in order to aid students. Please feel free to come and visit, get help, whatever.

TH 1:15-2:45 PM

TH 8:20-9:50 PM

Or by appointment.

Tests: There will be three tests and a cumulative final. The tests will be closed notes and books and will be spaced at approximately four to five week intervals. You may replace the grade on one previous test with your grade on the final, with the provision that you may not replace the grade for an exam you did not take. No make up exams will be given.

Laboratory: Physics is a laboratory based science. The laboratory will be 25% of your total grade.

Grade: Your grade will be determined as follows:

Tests        45%
Final                20%
Homework 10%
Laboratory 25%

Based on the following scale:
A 90-100
B 80-89
C 70-79
D 60-69
F 0-59

Attendance: Attendance is required and I expect you to attend class regularly. It is my experience that a typical student will drop a letter grade for each three to four absences.

Problems: If some problem arises causing you to miss an assignment, please see me in advance if at all possible and I will try and make accommodations. Incompletes are not given except under extreme circumstances.

Help: If you need help, get it. I hold office hours to help students and you should view me as a primary source of aid. Also free tutoring exists in the parallel studies tutoring lab, and I highly recommend this service. Feel free to work on homework assignments with classmates. However, regardless of the source of help you receive, you are responsible for your own work. If you copy someone else's homework without doing it yourself, you will not understand the material and despite having a good homework grade will not do well in the course.

Time: An important part of learning physics is homework. I believe whole-heartedly in homework. Physics requires a different type of thinking than other classes and this thought process needs to be developed through practice. I will assign a large number of problems weekly, which I consider a minimum amount of work to learn the material. It is my fervent belief that unless a student is a physics prodigy, he/she will not do well in this class without keeping up with the homework.

Grading: Homework will be picked up each Tuesday unless otherwise directed. The homework grade will consist of three parts, each of which counts equally. The parts include a completeness portion, homework quizzes, and reading quizzes. When homework is picked up, it will be assigned a grade from 0-5 depending on effort, and completeness. Once a week there will be a homework quiz consisting of several questions closley related to the homework. Additionally, on an almost daily basis there will a reading quiz. The reading quiz will cover primarily factual content of the assigned sections for the chapter. The point of the reading quizzes is to keep your reading of the textbook on pace with the course.

Review: I have found that students retain material better if they review frequently, and so each homework assignment will contain several review problems.

Due Date: Homework is due on my desk without my asking for it at the end of the class period every Tuesday, unless otherwise directed.

Organization: Please keep all your assignments so that any possible errors in my grading records can be rectified. It is a good idea to keep your assignments in a loose leaf binder for reference.

Late Homework: I realize that it is not always possible to complete assignments on time. In order to allow for unusual circumstances, I will accept up to two late homeworks without penalty from each student. A homework will not be accepted more than one week late. Also no assignments will be accepted after Tuesday of the last week of class.

Write-ups: A major component of this course is the laboratory. You will perform approximately twelve to fourteen laboratory exercises in this course. Each will require a brief write up which will be described in the laboratory assignment. The write ups may be either typed or neatly hand written. They should always include your raw data and relevant graphs and calculations.

Notebook: Research notebooks are a job requirement for any professional scientist or engineer. although the grading policies for the lab are not oriented around a notebook, you should still keep one for this class. At the bare minimum, a notebook should be bound. You should date each entry. Your notebook should at the bare minimum record your raw data and observations for each experiment. You should bring your notebook to class everyday. the notebooks will be spot checked three times during the semester for a total of one lab grade.

Attendance and Make-ups: All students must complete every lab assignment. You may make up two missed labs. Arrangements can be made with the lab assistant Larry Wiggington for makeups. Typically makeups can be conducted on lab days where we don't perform an experiment or on Fridays. A make-up lab must be completed within two weeks of the missed assignment. the lab report is due the Tuesdy following the completion of the make-up.

Due Date: Lab write-ups will typically be due one week after the finish of the experiment. The write ups are due during class on the due date without my asking for them.

Text: Physics for Scientists and Engineers, 4th ed., Paul Tipler

Reading Quizzes: I expect you to read the assigned sections shown in the calendar below. A check on your reading will be made by reading quizzes. The reading quizzes will count as 1/3 of your homework grade. There will be a reading quiz for each chapter we cover. Reading quizzes will be given in the first five minutes of class. If you are late, you will not be able to take the quiz.

Course Calendar: Under each week, the first line gives the chapters to be covered in the text on Tuesday and Thursday, respectively, the second line is the lab activity, and the third line shows the assignments due that day.