Physics 262 Home Page

• Instructor
• Text book
• TAs and Recitation
• Homework
• Exams
• Lab
• Calculators
• Course Grade Summary
• Couse Calendar

• Oscillations and waves;
• Fluids;
• Heat, Kinetic Theory, and Thermodynamics;
• Electrostatics and (some) Circuits.

• Home page:
• Click here.
• Office hours (subject to change):
• After class, 1107 Physics
• By appointment
• Any time you need to talk, complain, ask questions, vent.  I have an open door policiy, but keep in mind that there may be times when I will have to kick you out if it's not the regular office hours.
• Email anytime, of course.
• NOTE.  I am Drew Baden, not to be confused with Professor H. (Dennis) Drew, also in the Physics Department!

Volumes 1 and 2 are (or should be) available at the book store.  We will be using both, but we won't get to Volume 2 for a month or so.  I don't know how much it costs, but here is another place you can get it online.

A CD found on the back page of your text has not much material relevant to this course. It is not required material, but you may find the simple animations
helpful. To install it you need a serial number, click here or read the ReadMe.doc file. After installing, run ip.exe and open a file in IPSOnPC. There are several
programs for chapter 13, and two having to do with the figures in chapter 18.

Caution: when I tried to access the "abundance of material" promised on p. xviii for the student web site, my browser was caught in an inescapable loop. Instead,
click here to access the "student home" for this book.

• name: Mr. Gokhan Esen.
• room: 4211
• phone:  56192
• hours:   Tuesday and Thursday,  3-4pm

All sections will meet the first week of classes. The TA is there to help you with the concepts, and in particular to solve homework problems. There will be NO QUIZES in the discussion sections.  Just work on homework problems.  If you don't come to discussion because you are not having any difficulties, then that's great.  If you don't come because you think the TA is not doing a very good job, please let me know.  TAs need to learn how to teach, and I will keep your advice in strict confidence, and then will work with the TA to make the discussion section more useful.  If you don't come because you have other reasons, that's your business, you won't be penialized directly.  Note, however, that doing well in this course is really dependent upon doing and understanding the homework.  If you really work at the homework, you will do well.  If you don't, you probably won't.

All homework for a given chapter will be assigned on the day we begin coverage of the chapters in the lectures.  Homework will be due at the beginning of the next chapter, so you will usually hand in homework and get a new assignment on the same day.  See the course calendar below.

Online Web-based homework:  We are going to experiment with web-based homework submission.  Online homework will consist of problems that you can read, solve, and enter on the computer.  These problems will be graded by the computer, and as such will be of a format that requires an answer that is either correct or not.  The emphasis here is on understanding how to do the problems, not necessarily getting the right answers, but the online programs are quite cleverly written and you actually can learn from doing these homeworks!  Anyway, this is an experiment, so PLEASE let me know what you think of it.

Login.  For the online homework we will use a web-based homework and grading tool from a company called WebAssign.  This is a commercial outfit that is trying to make a profit.  We will see how it works.  Each of you should already have an account, and you access your account via the WebAssign login.  (If you do NOT have an account there, see me or please call me or email me immediately!)  You will be asked to input:

• Username:  Your username will be your email name as you have registered it at the university.  For example, myname would the username if my UMD-registered email address was myname@wam.umd.edu or myname@glue.umd.edu, and so on.
• University:   For this you enter umd.
• Password:   Your password is your university ID (or SSN, same thing).  You can, and probably should, change the password as you like once you login.

Methodology.  You will have multiple tries for each question.  For instance, say you are working on the first question, you calculate it and submit the answer.  When you submit the answer, the computer will tell you if you got it right or not, but the computer will not tell you what the right answer IS.  So, you can "go back to the drawing board", try again, and resubmit.  We think that this really helps you to learn, because in the old days when you just did the problem and hoped it was right, you stopped after the first try.  This way, maybe you will actually understand what to do.  We'll see.  Anyway, I will set the resubmittal level to 10 for the first assignment, but I might make it lower as the semester progresses.  So when you are doing the problem, don't sit there and put random numbers into it, or "guess" and see if that works, just go and figure out how to do the problem and enter the numbers after that.

Randomization.  All students will have the same problems, but the computer will randomize the values of all parameters in each problem, so the answers will be different.  This keeps people from being lazy and copying the answers from others, but it doesn't mean you can't all work together!  That's up to you, and working together cam be a good thing as long as it is done in good faith.

Late homework   For the online homework, you must do it before the closing date.  After the closing date, the grades will not be accepted by the computer, so please, don't screw this up!  The due date will be clearly posted when you log in to do the assignment.

Assignments and Solutions.  The assignments, and solutions, will be posted (here).  Solutions will of course only be posted after the assignments are due.

• Mid-term exams
• There will be 3 mid-term exams.  Times are as listed in the course calendar below, but are subject to change if we fall behind.  The exams will be frequently, though not exclusively, based on the homework assigned for the chapters covered.
• There will absolutely be NO make-up exams. Instead only the best two mid-term exam grades will count and will account for 35% of your semester grade.   By "best two", I mean that at the end of the year I will normalize all exams to have the same mean and standard deviation, and will pick the two exams that have the best score relative to the mean and standard deviation.  This way if you score 10 points above the mean on a hard exam, it will count more than if you score 10 points above the mean on an "easy" exam.
• In case class is canceled due to snow or any other cause, the exam will automatically be held on the next regular scheduled class day. If there is a fire alarm or bomb threat, the exam will be held at the same time in another room to be announced at that time.
• Final exam
• The final will be a mixture of what we covered all year, plus what was not covered in the last few weeks of classes.
• All students must take the final exam to pass the course.
• The Final counts for 25% of your semester grade.
• The final exam will be in this classroom, Monday, May 20th, at 10:30am.  Check your final exam schedule NOW to be sure there are no conflicts (there shouldn't be). The only recourse if your final exam schedule is inconvenient (three or more exams on one day, vacation travel plans, religious activities, etc.) is to change your course schedule now, during the drop/add period.

1. Solutions and distributions for exams
1. Exam 1 solutions (MSWord or PDF) and distribution (PDF)
2. Exam 2 solutions (MSWord or PDF) and distribution (PDF)
3. Exam 3 solutions (MSWord or PDF) and distribution (PDF)
4. Final Exam (MSWord or PDF)

• Lab courses will NOT meet until the 2nd week of classes, Feb 4-8.
• The lab course 262A is taught by Professor Roos in PHY 3219.  Click here for the 262A web site.
• The lab will count for 20% of the course grade.  Professor Roos will pass your grade to me, and I will fit it into your final grade for 262.
• If you do not pass the lab course, you will automatically fail this course.  These are University rules.

• Feb 8      Last day for schedule adjustment (adding a course) for Spring 2001
• TBD        First exam
• TBD        Second exam
• April 12   Last day to drop with a "W"
• TBD        Third exam
• May 20    Final exam