There simply is no other way to learn
Physics. Diligence with the homework will make the exams
easy but ignoring the homework
will make the exams
impossible! You must do the
homework--just to survive. Solutions will be posted
on the world wide web or the internet. Homework will not be
turned in and graded; this requires
great maturity and responsibility on your
part! Homework is vital in Physics!!!! I can not stress that
too much. Physics is like SCUBA diving -- it requires
participation and practice and learning from your own
errors. You may be able to understand the Civil War by
listening to lectures. But you can not successfully learn to
SCUBA dive only by listening to lectures --
you have to get wet! Physics,
too, requires that you "get
wet", that you get your hands messy in the mire of
homework problems. There simply is no other way to learn
Physics. Most of the exams will not be strikingly different
from the homework (The hour exams and the final exam will
all be multiple guess). Diligence with the homework will
make the exams easy but ignoring the homework will make the
exams impossible! Struggling with and learning from doing
the homework is vital! You
must do the
homework -- just to survive! I love to watch old Jacque Cousteau specials on
television. Cousteau makes scuba diving look so easy (after
all, he invented scuba diving!). But I would
(literally!) die if I tried to scuba dive. Learning
how to scuba dive is not the same thing as
watching Cousteau while he scuba dives! Homework is
like that. You have to do the homework yourself! A common and reasonable "rule of thumb" for any three-semester-hour
course is that you must put in six to nine hours
a week reading the material and thinking about and working on and answering
the homework. It is probably not
possible to survive (or pass) this course with a smaller
time committment.
For each chapter, about ten homework questions are assigned. These are short answer questions. I like those questions; I hope they are thought-provoking. However, my exams use multiple-choice questions. At the end of the homework solutions that are posted on the internet there are about ten "typical multiple-choice" questions. Those are then repeated with the correct answers. These same questions also appear as WebCT quizzes.
Online Quizzes: These are open book, open answer quizzes! They may be taken or retaken a maximum of five times if you like. For credit, they must be taken before 1300 (one o'clock) on the date of the hour exam for those chapters as given on the calendar. There is no reason that anyone should not receive 100 points for these Online Quizzes! Just don't wait until the deadline. Take the quizzes early! The only reason for the quizzes is to keep you from getting too far behind. Getting too far behind can be disasterous.
You can link to the Online Quizzes from here or from the Course Calendar page.
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