Main Handout: Exams

Physics 121, Fall 2010

Prof. E. F. Redish

• There are 3 exams. -- There will be two midterm exams and a final. All exams will be counted. Each midsemester exam will be given on a Friday (tentatively, on 10/8 and 11/12), and will be returned and gone over on the following Monday.
  
  
• Missing an exam -- If you miss an exam without a documentable excuse you will get a zero! If you have a schedule problem, you must let me know beforehand in order to be able to take the makeup. If you go on another class's field trip or to a sports event without telling me and miss the first exam you can take the makeup but will average in a 0 for the exam! (See the note about excuses on the homepage.)
  
  
• You can improve an exam grade 1: Regrades -- Since we go over midsemester exams in class, you will be able to get a good sense of how it was graded. If you think the grader misunderstood what you were saying, or failed to give you proper credit, you can apply to me for a regrade by writing a clear description of why you think you should have more points and turning it in with your exam. In addition to grading error, if you can make a case that you made an early error, but correctly carried out later parts that depended on that error, you can request consistency points. Again, you will have to explain carefully in writing your argument.
  
  Be sure not to write on your exam itself since this will mean I would have to look up the scanned exams to see what you originally wrote. If you alter a graded exam and request a regrade I will automatically reported it to the honor committee. Don't do it!
  
  
• You can improve an exam grade 2: Makeup exams -- Each midterm exam will be followed by a makeup exam on the Thursday a week after the exam, in the late afternoon. If you miss a midterm, you must take the makeup. If you are unhappy with your grade on an exam, you may take the makeup. If you take both the original and makeup exams, your grade for that exam will be the average of the two grades (whether you do better or worse).
  
  In my experience, students who carefully consider their errors and understand what they did wrong on the first exam almost always improve. Students who don't do this and just "take another shot" and "study some more" are as likely to go down as to go up.
  
  
• The final -- The final exam will be cumulative, but about half the exam will focus on the material done after the second midterm. The final will be a little less than twice as long as a one-hour midsemeter exam. In many semesters I have been able to obtain a four-hour block for you to do the exam in. This does not mean you are getting a four-hour exam! This means you are getting four hours to do a two-hour exam. Arrangements will be made for students who have a conflict due to other exams. Please speak to me about any conflict first since we do not want my class to inconvenience any other professors!
  
  
• You will have to think on exams! -- Exam problems will not be standard end-of-chapter problems. You will be expected to think, not replay a previously memorized tape. Questions of the type found on my exams will be included in the homework problems and problems from previous exams will be available on our web site.

RETURNS

University of Maryland	Physics Department	Physics 121 Home

Last revision 22 August, 2010.