This course is intended for biology majors and pre-health care professionals. The physics topics chosen are selected for these students and the contexts emphasize authentic biological examples. Prerequisites for the course include:

  • One year of college biology (BSCI 105 and 106 or the equivalent)
  • One semester of college chemistry (CHEM 131 or the equivalent)
  • One year of college mathematics (MATH 130 and 131 or the equivalent -- calculus and an introduction to probability)
  • Successful completion of PHYS 131 or the equivalent.

This is not your parents' physics! This class will focus on the physics relevant to living things from molecules to worms to woodpeckers. While physics, chemistry, and biology are well established fields, some of the scientific questions you will explore in this class have only recently been tackled. You will focus on physics at the convergence with biology, where physical, chemical and biological principles all come into play.

What do I need to buy?

In conjunction with the University's policy to save you money on texts, there is no textbook to buy for this course. We have developed an online WikiBook that you will be able to read for free. (If you would like to have a textbook, we can recommend a few.) There is also no lab manual to buy. The lab instructions will be made available online. You will need to have:

  • A Clicker -- a remote control device from TurningPoint that allows you to contribute answers in lecture. It is available at the Campus Book Store. This is the campus standard. If you have one from another class, you are likely to able to use it here. If you have an iPhone, iTouch, iPad, or Android device, you should be able to use it as a clicker. See the campus clicker page for more information:
    http://clickers.umd.edu/students/getting-started-students. We are all using TurningPoint's Cloud environment this term. If you were in Dr. Redish's 131 and used your clicker successfully, you should know what to do. Dr. Dreyfus's students are recommended to check with one of Redish's 131 students to be sure they do all the steps. You must do three things correctly:
    • Create a Turning Account
    • Purchase a license with TP (but you get a full rebate of your payment)
    • Register on ELMS and link your Turning Account.
  • Online HW service -- Homework will be done online through the online service, WebAssign. You can expect it to cost between $25-$30 for each semester. For instructions on how to purchase this, download and follow the instructions in the document, WebAssign Student Quick Start Guide.
    • The Institution Code is "umd" and the Class Keys are eight-digit codes. Be sure to sign up for the right sections!
      • Redish: umd 9585 4117
      • Dreyfus: umd 9719 1254

What else do I need to get?

A lot of what we'll be doing this term will be on the computer. Our readings and our homework will be on Canvas and WebAssign. You will also need access to a spreadsheet, and you will learn to download and use a video analysis program in labs. If you do not have your own laptop, you will need to seek out the campus computer rooms and find the places where you can access the appropriate programs. You need:

  • Access to a computer -- if you have your own laptop you will be able to use that. If not, you will have to seek out campus computers that run the programs we will be using and to see our announcements and to track your grades on Canvas. You will also need to regularly access your university email account as we will sometimes use that to communicate with you individually or by the class listserve.
  • A Spreadsheet -- You can either use Excel, OpenOffice, or the spreadsheet available at Google Docs (http://docs.google.com/) to do repetitive calculations. If you plan to use Google Docs you will need to have a Google account (a free Gmail account will work.)
    For those of you who are unfamiliar with spreadsheets, there are a number of good tutorials on the web. These below look particularly appropriate. Many others are easily found by putting "Excel tutorial" into your favorite search engine. We will do our own training on Excel in the first lab.
  • A Video Analysis Program -- In PHYS 131 you learned how to use ImageJ to quantitatively analyze images and videos. We will use it again in this semester. If you are transferring into the class and if you have your own laptop, we will help you install this in the laboratory period during the second week of the term.

What do I need to do to succeed in this class?

Here is a brief outline of what you will need to do throughout the class. For more details, see the Course Mechanics page.

  • Do the reading for each lecture and selected labs! -- For each lecture and some labs there will be a required reading of a few web pages. It is essential to do these readings as you will be responsible for them and they will often NOT be gone over in lecture! For a few of these you will be asked to ask a question about the page on your WebAssign online homework program. These questions will be due by 9 pm the day before the lecture class. You can find the lecture reading assignments on the Schedule Page for your instructor, and the Lab pre-readings under Recitation/Labs. (Be sure to read all the readings assigned on the Schedule page -- not only the ones on WebAssign that have required questions. You may also find it useful to follow some of the assigned webpages to the examples that are linked as Follow-ons at the bottom of some pages.)
  • Attend and participate in all the lectures, recitations, and labs! -- This is a class very much about doing, not just about learning facts or equations. In lecture we will be doing very little lecturing but a lot of answering questions, doing group problem solving, and holding class discussions. You will get participation points for some of this stuff, but that's not the point -- the point is that the doing in lecture and recitation, and in labs is where a lot of the real learning in this class takes place. A major part of what you will be learning is how to talk about and make sense of physics through problem solving with your classmates and by designing, doing, and analyzing experiments in lab.
  • Do the weekly homework! -- While the lecture and recitation is where you will learn to talk about and make sense of physics through problem solving, the homework is where you will get to try it out with your classmates on your own. You are encouraged to work with others. We have a Course Center (room 0208) (also embedded on an ELMS "Page" for the class) set up, where you can find people to work with (and get help when you are stuck). But be careful! If you work together, DO NOT create a common solution and have everyone copy it. Once you have worked out a solution together, each person must write it up separately in your own words. If two solutions are too nearly identical, neither will be given credit. Homework assignments themselves are found on our Homework Assignment page. Plagiarizing from online or other distributed written solutions is a VERY BAD IDEA. We can Google too! We know where solutions to our problems have made their way to the web (in violation of our copyright) and you will receive a 0 for any that are too close to those published solutions. Furthermore, if we catch you once, we will go back and check all your previous solutions and delete any credit for plagiarized solutions. Multiple offenses will be submitted to the Judicial Board.
  • Keep up! -- We know that you're busy, and in many other classes you can let things slide and then catch up for the exam. In this class that will be very difficult. Each lecture builds on the last, and on the homework from previous weeks. If you miss too much you may find yourself lost. In addition, your grade in this class is based on the accumulation of points in many different categories throughout the term. For details see our Course Mechanics page.

Times and Places

Event Redish (010x) Dreyfus (020x) Location
Lecture MWF 10-10:50 TTh 12:30-1:45
Physics 1412
Recitation
101 Mon 12noon   102 Wed 11am  
103 Tue 11am   105 Thu 8am  
104 Tue
2pm		   106 Thu
11am		  

203 Mon 2pm   204 Wed 8am  
206 Mon 5pm   202 Wed 2pm  
201 Tue 8am   205 Thu
2pm		  


Physics 3312
Laboratory
101 Mon
1-3pm		   102 Wed
12-2pm		  
103 Tue
12-2 pm		   105 Thu
9-11am		  
104 Tue
3-5pm		   106 Thu
12-2pm		  
203 Mon 3-5pm   204 Wed 9-11am  
206 Mon 6-8pm   202 Wed 3-5pm  
201 Tue 9-11am   205 Thu
3-5pm		  
Physics 3312

Instructors

Instructors Name Room Email Course Center Hours
Instructor
(010x)		 Dr. E.F. Redish Physics 1308 redish@umd.edu
W12-2
Instructor
(020x)		 Dr. B. Dreyfus Physics 1326 dreyfus@umd.edu
TA Lance Boyer Physics 3101 lboyer@umd.edu
TA Mark Eichenlaub Physics 1322 mark.d.eichenlaub@gmail.com
TA Kristi Engel Shoemaker 0126 klengel@terpmail.umd.edu
TA Vijay Kaul Physics 1322 vijay@umd.edu
TA Tsung-Jen Liao Physics 0104 tjliao@umd.edu
TA Arthur Lin Physics 3101 artlin@umd.edu
TA Miles Rehwoldt IPST 1102 mcrehwoldt@gmail.com
Head Lab TA Kim Moore Physics 1322 kmoore17@umd.edu
Course Center Physics 0208

All office hours are in the Course Center. Contact your instructor if you want to set up a meeting at another time.


Honor code:

The University of Maryland, College Park has a nationally recognized Code of Academic Integrity, administered by the Student Honor Council. This Code sets standards for academic integrity at Maryland for all undergraduate and graduate students. As a student you are responsible for upholding these standards for this course. It is very important for you to be aware of the consequences of cheating, fabrication, facilitation, and plagiarism. For more information on the Code of Academic Integrity or the Student Honor Council, please visit this link. If you have any questions about policy or procedures, please feel free to ask. We are looking forward to working with you and hope that you will both enjoy and learn a lot from the class.

Disability arrangements:

Students who have arrangements for extra time on exams should check in with the instructor at the beginning of the class. In this class, arrangements will be made for extensions of time on site rather than at the DSS site whenever possible. This is to permit the student to ask the instructor questions, and to account for occasional corrections or clarifications that are made during the exam period as the result of questions from other students.

Religious holidays and other excused absences:

This class follows campus policy for granting exemptions for religious holidays. For exemptions that you know about in advance, be sure to contact your instructor well beforehand to arrange for ways to make up the missed material. After the fact it may not be possible to arrange to makeup the missed work, even for absences that are legitimately excused! For absences for illness or other reasons, please email your professor stating the cause and date of your absence as soon as is possible.

The "ph" in physics stands for phun

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