PHY 205

Spring, 2001


Instructor:

P. Pratap

Office: 103 Petty Science Building

Office Hours: TTh, 8:00 a.m. - 9:15 a.m., or by appointment

Phone: 334-3214; email: pratapp@uncg.edu

Class Meeting time:

TTh 9:00-10:45

Text:

How Things Work. The Physics of Everyday Life, by Louis A. Bloomfield, 2nd Edition. John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

Click here for the Book web site

Course Syllabus:

Click here for the Syllabus

Project

Click here for instructions

Click here for a links

Interesting Links (to be updated frequently)

Louis Bloomfield's site at UVa: Stuff related to the book and to Bloomfield's course based on the book. There is also a link to corrections of mistakes in the book.

How stuff works: a cool web site that describes how things work in lay language. It has an extensive database, and you can send them questions on things that you are curious about. The site has nothing to do with the text book.

A link to the full report on middle-grade science books (reported in the local Sunday, Jan 14, 2001, newspapers)

Click here for more links


This course is designed to give you a broad overview of Physics. You will not be a physicist at the end of this course. (Become a major to be that!!) However, you will have a feel for how physicists think. You may also be able to think that way.

Each class will have the following format:

a) The instructor will perform some demonstration(s). Students are to observe what happens during the demonstration(s). They are free to make notes of what they see; in fact, they are encouraged to make notes.

b) Next, the instructor will ask the student to state their observations orally.

c) The students are then to make hypotheses to explain their observations.

d) The students are to design experiment(s) to test their hypotheses. The students must predict what the results of the proposed experiment(s) will be, based on their hypotheses.

e) The students will then refine their hypotheses.

 f) Steps d) and e) are repeated until the class reaches a consensus, and until all experiments proposed to test the consensus hypothesis yield their predicted results.

Homeworks

Homeworks are due on Tuesday of the following week (unless otherwise indicated by the instructor). Homeworks are important because (a) they carry 10% of the grade and (b) the tests are based on these exercises and problems. However, I encourage you to do more problems than those in the homework.

Each homework will be graded on a 100 point basis. Each working day that the homework is late will result in the deduction of 10 points (out of 100); a delay of 1 week will result in a deduction of 50 points.

Project

During the semester, you will have to do a project or the collision of a near-earth object (NEO) with the earth. Click here for more information on theis project. The project (and the poster) will carry 30% of the grade

Exams

 There will be two midterms and one final exam. Each midterm will carry 15% of the grade. The final will carry a grade 30% of the grade, and will be cumulative.

 

Finally, my name is Promod Pratap. My office is Room 103, Petty Science Building. My phone no. is 43214. I will have office hours from 9:30 - 10:50 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. If you cannot make this time, I will see you by appointment. (If I can't be there at those times, I will let you know.)

Click here for the Syllabus