Interesting rocket test on YouTube

Today the Space X had a nifty flight test for one of its rockets. It went quite well.

Compared to early US space program launches, which were not so excellent.

Physics is important.

Traffic signal

The average on the traffic signal problem is 8/15. The most frequent score was actually 15/15; many students crushed this problem, about 1/8th of class.

But many students had absolutely no idea how to attack this most basic problem, which brought the average down significantly. That is inexcusable since the traffic signal problem is a virtual copy of a problem we studied in lecture on Sept. 18, the bird on a wire, and on the midterm exam, the Spider-Man problem.

All iClicker data in

All the iCLicker scores are now IN. Good.

Now the big task: grading problems.

More clicking data

I just uploaded iCLicker 2 scores for another set of students.

Still about ⅓ of class to process.

Decimal point nonsense

Again the promised software upgrade has mangled the decimal point on your answers to the fourth iClicker question. (The other question answers were whole numbers or alphanumeric.) The answer for the fourth question was "-1.7" and many of you sent that. However the software recorded that as "-1.=" which looks heinous.

However, I did several practice sessions today at home and figured out the correct answer and all the incorrect answers. I have uploaded exactly what my system recorded; now you know how to interpret it. So all the garbled data has been graded by me accurately.

Some of you got partial credit for leaving off the negative sign on the fourth question.

I am uploading a few sets of iClicker data right now. More tomorrow.

Scantrons

I am placing the scantron scores now. Avg. 39/50, not too bad. So that is the first 50 points worth on the final; another 70 points to get scored on iClicker 2 and problems.

I am working on the iClicker 2 data this afternoon.

Final exam in MAP260

I partially misprinted the final exam location in the original syllabus in August. The true location is MAP260, our regular lecture hall.

Final Examination Thursday afternoon.
1:00 PM in MAP260 our regular lecture hall
not in BA119 as was incorrectly printed in the syllabus, now revised.
Be ready to get seated rapidly asap.

Off the air

I am going off the air til about noon tomorrow, working on the final exam like some kind of subhumanoid maniac from another planet.

SO.... Do not expect to get Webcourses responses from me until then.

More HW 11 papers

I just finished grading beaucoups homework 11 papers, and I will post the scores. Look for your PDF in course mail tomorrow early.

Get ready for a challenging final exam.

Closing bonus point question discussion tonight.

Tonight I will be closing the Discussions area set up for creating questions and earning bonus points. I will lock it at 10 PM. After that, you will be able to study it but not post.

Final exam specs

Here are the basic specs for our final exam:

1. Cumulative
2. 120 points
3. Thursday, Dec. 6, 1:00 PM sharp. No one will be admitted after we begin the exam.
4. Bring raspberry-colored UCF scantron, your iClicker 2, non-graphing calculator, pencil and eraser. Areas for scratch work will be included in the exam handout.

Make sure to be absolutely ready at 1 PM sharp. We have 260 or so students, and we have to get everyone smoothly through this three-hour gate without mayhem.

Brain burners for the final exam

I have just figured out a great brain burner for the final exam. Should be crushproof. YESSSS!

Fig. 1. Crushproof floating disaster ball.

Amburgey-Maguire

HW 11 papers (PDF) for Amburgey through Maguire are now posted and in your course mail inbox in Webcourses.

HW 11 solution is UP.

For those of you who want to view the solution PDF of Homework 11, you can now grab it from the Homework folder on Webcourses.

Grading going OK, but...

Grading HW 11 is going slowly, and the reason is I have a nasty sinus infection. It is really laying me low, feeling vague etc. But I am going to keep working on it. I am now in the process of uploading the first half of the homeworks.

Grading HW 11 today

I will be grading Homework 11 today. When I finish and post all the scores in Webcourses, I will course mail each student on the list a PDF of the graded paper, so that you can study with it and get ready to crush the final.

Extra office hours on Wednesday

We will have office hours on Wednesday:

1. regular time, 11 AM - noon, and
2. extended office hours, 2 - 4 PM.

Location, PS158 in the Physical Sciences Building.

Class participation scores are UP.

You can now view the class participation pointage you earned, out of 20 points possible.

Plus, I calculated the class participation bonus, based on correct answers performance. A few students nabbed those bonus points. Good.

Structure of the final exam

You can review the structure of the final exam. I have set a PDF file in the home page for this.

Bonus points opportunity: create a multiple choice question

For those of you who want to try to earn a bonus point before the final exam, you can create a multiple choice question. Do this in the Discussions area "Create a bonus points question for the final examination" in Webcourses.

Here are the rules:

Post a question that you create, based on your lecture notes, readings, homework or other materials.

1. Create a multiple choice question with four or five options.
2. Indicate the correct option with an * asterisk.
3. In the Subject box, type in a short phrase that describes your question.
4. Below your question's options, skip a few lines and type in the date of lecture or page in the textbook where another student can study up on the correct concept.
5. Dr. B will comment or maybe ask you to revise the question.
6. If your question is good enough to use on the final exam, you will earn two bonus points.
7. Take a look at the example question.
8. You may contribute one question only, so make it a good one.

The bonus questions can make a nifty study guide, too. Plus, if you have studied it and I choose one or two of the questions, you will already know the answer for those questions on exam day. Handy!

Registering iClicker 2

Incredibly, there are still unregistered iClicker 2's in class:

• #81DA3962
• #87FCB4CF
• #8B70F00B

No points going that way.

SARC review session with Stephanie Pearson

Here are some specs for a special review session organized by SARC for all PHY2048 sections.

1. Stephanie Pearson is the SARC tutor for PHY 2048 class.
2. The final review session she's conducting for PHY2048 students is a part of Study Union.
3. The session will be on Tuesday, December 4th
4. in room 220 of the Student Union
5. from 12:00-2:00 pm.

She will be going over some review problems from the textbook. You can double check the schedule on the Student Union website.

Here is the list of problems she will be covering. It will also be available at the SARC lab.

Chapter	Problem number
5	33
6	Ex. 6.4
7	33
8	19
9	49
10	49
11	18
12*	25
13	39
14	3
15*	27

* Note: other sections in her review covered these chapters, but we did not. They will not be on our final exam.

HW 11 is ready.

Your non-rectangular dam force problem is now ready. Follow your notes from lecture and look through the example in Ch. 14.

clickers updated

Your iClicker 2 data is up to date all the way to yesterday's lecture, P25. If you care to recalculate your grade estimate, now would be a good time.

solutions and new HW

Solutions for Quiz 2 are now posted in the usual place. I am still fussing with the solution for HW 9, though.

Also, HW 10 is now up in PDF. Work neatly and turn in a good communication of the essentials.

No WebAssign today

On account of some family basketball-related excitement yesterday, I have not come up with a WebAssign homework assignment.

It is OK. I will see you all on Tuesday afternoon, and we will do a good WebAssign assignment next week.

For now, you could read and skim in Ch. 13 on universal gravitation.

Sorry: no office hours today.

NO OFFICE HOURS TODAY for PHY2048, 11:00 AM - noon.

I am handling a family emergency.

We will have regular lecture meeting on Thursday, 3 PM. Check the podcast for the basic method of handling the homework.

Homework ready

Your homework is now ready, HW 9. It is due on Thursday at 3 PM.

Seating

Students with last names A-D please sit in front two rows to receive your Quiz 2 papers today.

Vote!

I was on line Saturday afternoon for four hours so that I could vote early and teach all day tomorrow, Tuesday.

Make sure to get your vote cast tomorrow, if you have not already done so! This is a big election. Voting is good.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…

Nov. 6 assignment ready in WebAssign

Your reading assignment is from Ch. 10.6 about torque up to Ch. 11.1 about the vector product. We will start in Ch. 11 on Tuesday.

The WebAssign homework for November 6 will activate at 11 AM today.

Update: must modify λ

My normal trick is to integrate half of the object, then multiply the result by 2 for the final answer. OOOOPS. That won't work very well for the original λ(x) on the HW 8 PDF. It is negative value mass density on the interval (-L/2,0). NO GO!

So we will have to use a modified λ, specifically λ(x) = α|x|, i.e.,

λ(x) = αx, 0 ≤ x ≤ L/2,
      -αx, -L/2 ≤ x ≤ 0.

Using this modified λ(x), you can use the "integrate half, then ×2" trick. Or, you could split the moment of inertia integral up into two integrals, each with different integrands, using λ(x) above.

Homework 8 ready

There are two parts to Homework 8.

1. An integral from lecture
2. Another moment of inertia calculation of an elementary nature.

It is available on Webcourses now, in PDF. You might find it helpful to review Example 10.4 from the textbook.

Week's plan

This week's plan is:

1. Tuesday Oct. 30, regular lecture
   1. finish collisions,
   2. work on Ch. 10 concepts like moment of inertia;
   3. assign written homework #8.
2. 
   Thursday, Nov. 1, mini-lecture and Quiz 2 (15 points)
   1. Collect HW 8 and review solution;
   2. take Quiz 2;
   3. assign WebAssign homework for the rest of chapter 10, which we will cover next week, plus a sneaky peek into Ch. 11 on angular momentum.

It is a full week, lots of things to tie together for Quiz 2 maximum performance.

Also study...

I also like these two items in chapter 9 for reinforcing last week's discussion:<ol><li>Example 9.9, p. 252. Try working it out in the &quot;lab&quot; frame, following the textbook, then boost to the CM frame and work on it there. Can you show that, in the CM frame, the tilt angle for proton 1 is 74&deg;?<li>Also: conceptual example 9.13 is quite nice.</ol><p>Are you thinking about the quiz yet? :D

WebAssign homework

You have some extra reading in the textbook, from Ch. 19 and Ch. 21, plus the next chapter, Ch. 10. Here are the specs:

Readings:

1. Ch. 19, pp. 554-555 about experimental foundation of the Ideal Gas Law; p. 555 discusses experimental origin of Ideal Gas Law.
2. Ch. 21, pp. 600-604 about the kinetic theory of gases. This last section of reading in Ch. 21 is an application of kinetic energy and momentum principles to many submicroscopic particles in a way that shows the theoretical basis of the Ideal Gas Law.
   1. p. 600, the five assumptions of Ideal Gas Law
   2. p. 602, "Therefore, a key link…"
3. Ch. 10, up to section 10.5 about moment of inertia. Write out your solution to Ch. 10, #34 (18th item on assignment) in your notebook and we will review it in lecture on Tuesday.

Podcasts are up; preparing WebAssign reading.

The week's two lectures are now up for iTunes U viewing.

I will be working on the WebAssign readings next, so stay alert for that -- I hope to have that ready today (Friday).

HW 7 is ready.

Your Homework 7 is ready now, and you can download the PDF handout.

The mathematics is not too hard, but the thinking is subtle. Work on it carefully. It is due on Thursday at 3 PM.

New plan for handing back HW 6

NEW PLAN:

Homework 6 is ready to be returned.

Therefore, everyone who turned in HW 6, second letter A in their last name, please come up to the front at the start of class. Shree Ram and I will hand back your papers and then you can return to your normal seats with your group.

NOT: Students with second letter = A in the last name...

Homework 6 is ready to be returned.

Therefore, everyone who turned in HW 6, second letter A in their last name, please sit in the first two rows tomorrow.

No drop in time today.

I was hoping to have some time for students to drop in to my office today, but unfortunately, due to some "unusual" techniques

at my dentist appointment this morning, my mouth is semi-paralyzed for a few hours, and I am feeling a bit poorly. So I will try to get to lecture tomorrow EARLY EARLY EARLY and stay after, plus regular office hours on Wednesday.

WebAssign grade pointage estimate

You can also estimate the pointage on your semester grade that you'll get from WebAssign. The maximum pointage, 28, will be assigned at the end of the semester, but if you want to estimate where it is right now, as if I were going to award grades today, you can look at the two new rows on you My Grades page in Webcourses:

The raw score is the same as that which you can see in WebAssign. It does not include points from the assignment for Oct. 23, though.

For the pointage on your semester grade, you just take the percentage, multiply &mult;28, then round up to the nearest integer. In the demo My Grades page above, the percentage is 108/120, 90%, which converts to 25.2 and rounds up to 26/28. So if I were giving grades today, the demo student would get 26 out of the possible 28 points on his semester grade from WebAssign homework.

Remember, this estimate is only temporary. We will have lots more WebAssign before December, but for now, this estimate will be useful.

Homework in WebAssign is now ready.

Your WebAssign assignment is ready now.

Study in chapter 9 as far as the center of mass concept, p. 254. The first two exercises are about center of mass. The last exercise in this assignment is one of the brain burners that you have to work on sequentially and finish -- or get no points.

It is due on Tuesday, 3 PM.

The Gaussian is your friend.

There is a special integral, highly bodacious, yet incredibly useful all over the place in mathematics and science: The Gaussian.

It comes disguised in all kinds of variations, and all of them are useful from time to time. Our textbook features a time-dependant external force F(t) in Figure 9.3 that looks like a Gaussian. The integral of it is discussed, and then approximated by the rectangle in Fig. 9.3(b).

So you might as well make your acquaintance with the Gaussian integral and start getting used to it. It looks heinous but it can be your friend.

The iClicker 2 data is updated.

I just finished updating the iClicker 2 data with all lectures, up to Friday's P18, in which we did some clicking. Not all lectures have clicking, though most of them do. You can view the list of session in the "Class participation log" on the Webcourses home page. We will talk about this data and how it affects your semester grade in detail on Tuesday.

But for now, you can go by what I've written in the syllabus, after looking over your My Grades page in Webcourses, especially the iClicker 2 answered subtotal row and the iClicker 2 correct subtotal row, viz.

Blurbs and solutions

I am placing blurb sheets for each scantron form in the exam blurbs folder on Webcourses. Also, the solutions of each written problem in their various forms. You can look up the grading scheme on each written problem.

"Known issue"

I just got a "known issue" alert from the iClicker programmers. They did not know about it until last week, though. It was not just the .7, .= trouble that I observed. It is EVERY decimal fraction, so much worse than I was initially told.

However, they have figured out the character shifting, so I can go in and translate to your true signal. It might change a score or two in #14 or #15 for some of you, though the bulk of you have the correct scores. I will let you know when I upload any changes.

They promise that the programming error is fixed in the October version to be released this month. I hope they have it in time for the final exam or they will have to get a visit from a friend of ours, Mr. Chuck Norris.

Homework for Tuesday is UP.

The WebAssign homework for Tuesday, Oct. 16 is now available. There is a bit of review reading in ch. 7, plus a deeper push into ch. 8, with some basic chapter 8 problems to work on.

For additional studying power, I will mention that I like problem 53, in chaptr 8.

Homework 6 ready

You can now get the handout for Homework 6. Print it out and have it ready for Thursday.

Scantron data

Scantron data is UP. Average = 11/13. Not bad.

Grading

I will start posting in some midterm exam data today. Your My Grades page in Webcourses will look something like this:

You'll see the breakdown of the midterm exam into three subscores.

1. "..midterm scantron" for the multiple choice part;
2. "..midterm 14 and 15" for the two quick calculations;
3. "..midterm problems" for the fireman, Spider-Man and either cube or fuzzy dice problems.

Also: you might see these rows appear, disappear and then reappear a few times, which shows that I am messing with the grade book, so do not panic.

Side note: a few students appear to have messed up their PID on the scantron, so they will have a zero in the "..midterm scantron" row -- until I get your paper and scantron dug out of the pile and grade it by hand. Pain in the neck, but...

I expect to hand back a few exams, though not all, tomorrow in lecture, so be ready. I will send course mail to the students whose exams are ready tomorrow, so you can sit up front.

Bad news

There is some bad news for everybody, and more bad news for about two dozen.

1. There are about two dozen students who have not registered their iClickers and/or are not operating with an iClicker 2. They will not be getting any class participation points or midterm points from iClicker 2 activity. Not good.
2. Because of this, the functionality of the software is compromised. That is going to slow down the midterm exam grading process for everybody.

This is real trouble.

As for item #2, I am going to hack the data files apart and see if I can force it to yield the data I need to grade. It is a very disappointing position for us to be in.

Homework in WebAssign

We had a family emergency situation yesterday, so I did not get the homework up in WebAssign. It is mostly multiple choice concept questions but one nice little brain burner problem featuring Spider-Man and a bit of trig.

That being the case, I have set a Spider-Man thread in Discussions on Webcourses.

Homework status

Everybody in class has now had one homework assignment graded by me. You ought to be grading your own homework on the weeks you do not turn it in, going by the solution PDFs.

Also, there is a new row on your My Grades page. It will start keeping the running subtotal of your HW scores for the rest of the semester.

Quiz 1 scores are UP.

All of the Quiz 1 scores are now up.

Students with green and yellow quizzes, be ready to pick up your paper at the start of lecture tomorrow.

P.S. I am still having trouble with uploading iClicker 2 data. I.e., "'PC LOAD LETTER"

Your reading and WebAssign homework is now available.

Your reading and WebAssign homework is now available. Bunch of problems across three chapters. Work carefully.

Podcast UP

Yesterday's podcast is now UP.

Look for the WebAssign HW a little later today.

Replacement podcast

The podcast of yesterday's lecture accidentally got discombobulated!

So I have fixed up a new version, same basic material, but different narration. Also it is in .mov video format, instead of my usual .m4a enhanced audio.

Go for it.

Solutions

I just posted a bunch of solutions:

1. HW 4 solution, with brain burner shown.
2. Quiz 1 solutions: versions A (white version), B (pink), C(yellow) and D(green). Each version was some variation of handling a half-parabola. Look in the Exam blurbs folder on the home page.
   

I wrote a few variations on the solution of each version. That being the case, it would probably be helpful for everyone to view all solutions, and you could learn something maybe.

Precise diagram of center of curvature, HW 4

To follow up a remark of Daymian J. in Discussions, about how to find r, I posted a diagram of the parabolic path and the centers of curvature, including the target point at time t = 4.00 sec.

So, go look at "Laws of motion" and the thread about finding r.

Quiz grades will be next week, probably.

With 60 homeworks and 270 quizzes to grade, and me only for the work crew, it will likely be next week when I post quiz grades.

Be patient. Be alert.

Tangency

Velocity is the definitive tangent vector, a definition that extends all the way into the curved spacetimes of the general theory of relativity. Nice.

Some blurbs on tangency at MathWorld.

Seating chart Tuesday

1. A-B on left side, in front of the lectern, first two rows.
2. C-D on right side, first three rows.

Trouble with some iClicking data.

There has been a persistent system error for iClicker 2 data uploads. Some of you have your data squared away, some do not. The trouble seems to be happening with people who have NIDs near the end of the alphabetic order. It is nothing you all have done; it is Webcourses. The Webcourses sys admins and I are trying to sort it out, no success so far.

But we WILL get it squared away as soon as we can, and then things will be a lot happier, gradebook-wise, kind of like taking a piece of raw pyroxene jadeite, a rock, and turning it into a beautiful piece of jade.

Sept. 11 assignment is ready.

Projectiles and circular paths galore are now ready for you in WebAssign, due on Tuesday, Sept. 11.

Attendant required reading is: Chapter 4, sections 3, 4 and 5.

Bonus point situation from iClicker 2

I just typed up a short blurb about how to earn bonus points in iClicker 2. Uusually it is in the syllabus, but this is good too, in Webcourses.

Go take a look. Those bonus points come in handy at the end of the semester!

Homework 3

You can grab the PDF of Homework 3 in the Webcourses home page. It is due on Thursday. Think about two separate equations of motion, one of them accelerated and the other not accelerated.

Ex. 46, p. 70

Yes, I like it a lot.

HW 1 and HW 2 points now in Webcourses

You can now view your HW 1 or HW 2 score, if you turned it in, by looking at the My Grades page in Webcourses.

I will be handing back the HW 1 and HW 2 papers tomorrow.

S.I. schedule

Jon Ousley's S.I. schedule is the following:

Tuesday

12:00 - 12:50 PM

ENGR286

Wednesday

1:30 PM - 2:20 PM

ENGR224

Thursday

1:30 - 2:20 PM

COMM114

Friday

11:00 - 11:50 AM

PSY111

Trigonometry Mania Days for homework

The Sept. 4 assignment is now up in WebAssign for your trigonometric enjoyment. Kind of crazy amount of trig, but we need to be ultra-sharp with it all through physics and engineering.

So... GO! GO! GO!

Group theory

Now that we have tools for solving problems, the lecture process will begin to modify, with small group activity sprinkled in -- groups of two or three students sitting together and working on a problem together.

That being the case,

1. if you have a friend in lecture, try to sit with your friend, but
2. if you do not have a friend in lecture yet, make friends with the person sitting next to you!

 

It is your nature to learn, and the more interactions you have, the more you will learn, just like a Terminator. Guided and coached student-to-student interaction in lecture, breaking out of the "lecture" mode for a few minutes, is a good, efficient way for you to learn the art of solving problems.

So be mindful of grouping when you get to the lecture hall.

Podcast UP, also HW2 and document cam.

You can download the PDF of Homework 2, due on Thursday, 3 PM. Look in the Homework folder in Webcourses. Also the document camera work is UP in Webcourses, too.

The first lecture podcast is now up in iTunes U. View the short YouTube in the iTunes U folder in Webcourses, then open the podcast. Subscribe and all new lectures will be downloaded automatically.