SYLLABUS:  PDF

ADDITIONAL MATERIALS NOT IN LSU TEXTBOOK:

FORMULA SHEETS:  Exam 1  |  Exam 2  |  Exam 3

EXAMS:  

• Exams from past semesters

• Exam 1 → Practice Exam 1 - Solutions
• Exam 2 → Practice Exam 2 - Solutions
• Exam 3 → Practice Exam 3 - Solutions

REQUIRED TEXT:
Fundamental of Physics, by Halliday, Resnick, and Walker, 8th edition (Wiley).

PURPOSE:
To introduce the concepts and methods of electromagnetism, electromagnetic waves, and circuits at the level of a beginning scientist, or engineer. To build problem solving skills and to effectively use mathematics to describe nature. To understand the scientific method and the use of measurement to understand nature.

This course covers chapters 21-33,35-36 and 38 of your textbook. There are a few sections that will be omitted as noted on the course schedule. Please note that chapter 38 will not appear in the PHYS2102 version of the textbook available at the LSU bookstore. We will be making the reading material for this chapter available via the course web site prior to covering this material in class.

You are required to read the assigned relevant material in the textbook prior to attending the lectures (see the following lecture and reading schedule). Quizzes on the assigned reading will be given during the lecture period from time to time to check that students are keeping up with the assigned material. You will be expected to be able to discuss the relevant material from the reading assignment.

HOMEWORK:
A homework assignment consisting of approximately 20 problems and a few questions from the text will be assigned on WebAssign once each week. Answers to homework will be entered into WebAssign via the Internet. It will be due on Tuesday's at 11:59 PM. WebAssign has the feature that it gives you instant feedback allowing you to retry problems answered incorrectly. To access WebAssign you will need to self enroll. To self enroll you will need a course number which is available for each section on the individual sections web page which can be accessed from the course web page (see above). When self enrolling you will be asked for a username and password. To protect your identity, please refrain from using social security numbers or LSU ID numbers as your username. WebAssign - Some bookstores will sell the text and WebAssign access packaged together. If you do not purchase these as a package, there is a small fee required to access your account and it is considered equivalent to a small textbook cost. The easiest manner to pay is with a credit card. If you do not have a credit card available, you may purchase an access number at the bookstore on campus. The first assignment is available on WebAssign and is due late Tuesday night of the second week of class.

One sixth of your course grade will be based on Homework and Quiz scores. Since homework is considered a learning opportunity, at the end of the semester your raw homework score will be divided by 0.9, such that any score above 90% will receive full marks (100%). You are encouraged to solve additional problems in the text and many of the exam problems will be similar to the problems in the text. It will be very important to keep up with the homework! Past experience shows a strong correlation between quality of homework and exam grades. Homework problems are your way of assessing your mastery of the material AND your problem solving ability. The use of solutions manuals to solve homework problems is considered cheating; it is the use of someone else's work and reporting as your own. Such use is also strongly discouraged since it short-circuits students thinking process and therefore prevents learning. Good homework scores and very poor exam grades are common for students making use of solutions manuals.

To discourage the use of solution manuals, a homework quiz consisting of 1 or 2 of the assigned problems, presented exactly as they appear in WebAssign, will be given to students during the lecture period following the homework due dates. It is expected that students who carefully prepare the homework assignment will have little or no difficulty receiving full credit on these homework quizzes. The percentage score on the homework quizzes, averaged over the entire semester, will be multiplied by the students homework score as determined by WebAssign, to determine the homework grade. Students are thereby encouraged to review solved homework problems just prior to attending the class following homework due dates.

QUIZZES:
Short multiple choice reading quizzes will be given sometime during the lectures from time to time. The material will come from the previous reading assignments in oder to check that students are reading the material to be covered in lecture before attending class. Quizzes will not be announced in advance and will occur at any time chosen by the instructor. Homework quizzes will be given each week on Wednesdays or Thursdays as described above. There will be no makeup quizzes given. However, the 3 lowest quiz scores will be dropped at the end of the semester.

TUTORING:
If you do not understand part of the material or experience difficulty in working the problems assigned seek help!!!! First from the graduate student tutors who will be available in room 102 Nicholson Hall at scheduled times posted there. You have already paid for this service and you are strongly encouraged to make use of it. If no tutor is present at a scheduled time please note the time and date and report it to me. In addition your instructor will be available during office hours for any help you may need with the course material, problem solving, or other matters.

EXAMS:
There will be three(3) 1-hour exams given during the semester that will draw from the reading assignments and lecture materials. These exams will be closed book and consist of problems and short essay questions. Some of the problems will look very much like problems assigned for homework. Some will look substantially different and require the students to make use of the concepts covered to solve. Since partial credit will be given for some of the problems, it is essential that you show all work and give explanations and intermediate steps. An answer without showing the appropriate steps through a calculation will not be accepted. Units are to be carried through as a part of the solution. You will be supplied with a standard formula sheet for use during the exam. These will be available on the course web page sometime before the exam. No other written material is allowed. You will need a scientific calculator. The exams will be given on Thursday evenings from 6:00 – 7:00 PM on September 24th, October 22nd and November 19th as specified on the course calendar. The rooms for the exams are as follows:

• Sec. 1 - Lockett 6 (Giammanco)
• Sec. 2 - Lockett 2 (DiTusa)
• Sec. 3 - Lockett 2 (Vekhter)
• Sec. 4 - Lockett 15 (Lee)
• Sec. 6 - Nicholson 119 (Gonzalez)

There will be no make-up exams and no exam scores will be dropped from a students grade.

FINAL EXAM:
The University scheduled the final exam on Tuesday December 8th at 12:30 – 2:30 PM. It will be of the same format and subject to the same policies as the regular exams. It will be comprehensive in nature, but will emphasize the material covered after the last regular exam. The exam rooms will be announced at a later date.

GRADES:
The final grade in this course will be determined from exams, quizzes, and homework, as follows:

Preliminary Exams - 100 pts. each	300 pts.
Final Exam - 200 pts.	200 pts.
Homework and Quizzes - 100 pts.	100 pts.
TOTAL	600 pts.

Grades will be based on a percentage of the score out of 600 possible. Grades will be assigned according to the scale below:

GENERAL EDUCATION STATEMENT:

Physics 2102 is a General Education Course in Natural Sciences (Physical). Therefore this course is designed to address the following general education Criteria in Natural Sciences (Physical):

• The structure and properties of matter
• Motion and Forces
• The conservation of energy
• the interactions of energy and matter

Physics 2102 addresses the following general education learning objectives for physical natural sciences: By semesters end students are expected to be able to:

• demonstrate knowledge of a broad survey of light, electricity, and magnetism as well as AC and DC circuits, including the underlying principles that govern the forces between elementary charges, and between charges and light;
• demonstrate the ability to use inductive and deductive reasoning to understand scientific phenomena as demonstrated by an ability to solve problems in light, electricity, and magnetism as well as simple circuits.
• demonstrate an ability to relate light, electricity, and magnetism as well as simple AC and DC circuits to chemistry, engineering and/or technology.

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