PHYS-141-05, MTWR 3:10 PM, 53-206
Pete Schwartz, Cal Poly Physics, Pete’s Webpage, Pete’s other classes, Pete’s Research
Email: pschwart@calpoly.edu, 756-1220, My office is at 180-608, the new science building, room 608
Office hours: M(2:10), T(4:10), W(1:10), R(2:10), F(2:10)
My Resume, Teaching Statement, Student Evaluations, and the rest of my public application for promotion.
The Syllabus explains the class policies including how your final grade is determined.
Teaching “flipped”, “parallel”, with an open-online text. Please see video explaining How we are learning physics if you are not a student in the class, or if you don’t need to get credit for seeing the video, you can see the youtube version of How we are learning physics. A recent publication lends support to several aspects of our learning method: Active learning better engages the brain; asking questions (like in our videos) is an effective way to learn; learning concepts in parallel allows us to space out the concepts and revisit them over a longer period of time.
While I assign videos via a website that keeps track of your participation, you can also access my youtube videos directly from my youtube website, or just google the titles. However, in order to receive credit for watching the videos, you need to follow the links on this website.
I am writing a basic textbook to cover the material consistent with our timeline. I will add the chapters here and also at the appropriate place in the timeline as I write them. In week 5, I started to use chapters from the newly available OpenStax calculus based textbook because many of them work for us after we have set the foundation of conceptual understanding. I will intersperse these chapters with the short conceptual guidance I write to support the videos.
Group project: see the first project description, the Second Project Description, and the Second Project Website where you can post your project,
Problem Sets: PS#1, PS#1_Solutions, PS#2, PS#2 solutions, PS#3, PS#3 comments, PS#4, PS#4 solutions, PS#5, PS#5 solutions, PS#6, PS#6_solutions, PS#7, PS#7 Solutions from Pete, PS#7_Solutions from student, PS#8, PS#8 Solutions, PS#9, PS#9 solutions, PS#10, PS#10 solutions
Exams: BE#1 Solutions, BE#2 Solutions, MT#1, MT#1 with comments MT#1 Student Solutions BE #3 is questions 7, 8 on PS#4, BE #4 is Example #3 in textbook section 6.1 as assigned in question #2 of PS#6. MT#2 + extra problem, MT#2 Solutions, MT#2 help on #1, #5
Response to Friday Feedback: End of Wk 2 / Beginning of Wk 3, End of Week 8, Final Student Evaluations, SurveyMonkey Results, Final Statement
To see the week’s assignments, please click on the number of the week at left on the table below. Cal Poly’s Calendar
| Week page | Topics |
| Wk 1 | Our Learning Model Introduce momentum, energy, forces, and motion (kinematics); and start using these ideas to answer simple questions. |
| Wk2 | Analyzing problems from all lenses. Power as time derivative of energy (or work). We make a video of our bodies to make kinematic graphs and measure our power output. Dynamics questions:
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| Wk3 | Hour 1: Vectors in one dimension Hour 2: Springs and Potential Energy Graphs Hour 3: Changing reference frames Hour 4: Friction |
| Wk4 | Hour 3: Midterm #1 Hour 4: Review MT #1 Hour 1: 4 kinds of rotational questions and direction Introduction to Rotation Hour 2: moment of inertia and rotational energy and rotational dynamics 1-D rotational kinetics, torque |
| Wk5 | Hour 3: Statics Hour 4: Angular momentum (conserved) as a scalar kind of. Gravitation and the inverse square law
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| Wk6 |
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| Wk7 |
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| Wk8 |
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| Wk9 only 3 day |
including precession include a day lab… precession lab |
| Wk10 | Ladder Problem Sharing Video Projects Bugatti Veyron Problem Final exam review and more problem solving |
| Exam week | Cal Poly exam Schedules Wednesday, June 14, 1:10 PM – 4:00 PM |
As I try to improve the class, I am keeping Notes to Self