PHYSICS 101

Fall 2003 Session - General Information Physics 101 is a course of study in mechanics and waves (including optics) for students intending to pursue the life-sciences. A list of topics, in the form of lecture titles, is appended. The components of the course are: 26 lectures (schedule overleaf) 12 problem assignments (CAPA system - schedule overleaf - details appended) 6 laboratory sessions (schedule overleaf) One Midterm examination Tuesday Nov 4, 19:00 21:00 Final examination (written invigilated exam - during formal fall term examination period date to be announced by the University)

The textbook for the course is "Physics: Algebra/Trig'' by Eugene Hecht (3rd edition). The evaluation scheme for the course is Assignments 10% Laboratory reports 20% Midterm 20% Final examination 50% Addresses The surest way to reach the instructor, or any tutor or lab instructor, is by e-mail Instructor - R.B. Moore, RPB room 220, 398-7028 moore@physics.mcgill.ca CAPA administrator capa2@physics.mcgill.ca Web pages Web page for the course - www.physics.mcgill.ca/~moore/P101/ CAPA assignments- http://capa.physics.mcgill.ca CAPA help - http://capa.physics.mcgill.ca/CAPA/help.html or http://capa.physics.mcgill.ca/CAPA/FAQ.html For CAPA passwords: http://capa.physics.mcgill.ca/capa-bin/emailid.html Laboratory exercises are in room 0070 in the basement of the Wong building Laboratory reports are to be handed to your laboratory demonstrator during the following laboratory session. Your report for the last laboratory is to be delivered to your demonstrator by Monday Dec. 1 at 18:00. You should therefore obtain your demonstrator's address before then. Policy regarding calculators and computers A scientific calculator with trigonometric functions, square roots and logarithmic functions is necessary for the course, and for the final examination. Any calculator will be allowed into the examination. The course is set up on the assumption that you will have access to the Web and to a printer. (This is particularly true for the assignment component of the course that is administered through the CAPA system.) If you are having difficulty with acquiring access to a computer, or are unfamiliar with the computer services on campus for students, contact the Students Undergraduate Society (SUS) at 398-6979 or taskforce@sus.mcgill.ca As soon as you can arrange it you should acquire your own computer. Your primary requirement for this course should be that it provides quick and reliable access to the internet. A detailed timetable for the course is overleaf and descriptions of the course components are appended. This information is also available on the web at www.physics.mcgill.ca/~moore/P101/

COURSE TIMETABLE Lectures Part 1 - Introduction to physics and to motion (Kinematics) Lecture 1 (Thursday Sept. 4) - Physics and illusions - why physics? Lecture 2 (Tuesday Sept. 9) - The art of physics - Finding patterns in numbers Lecture 3 (Thursday Sept. 11) - Motion illusions Lecture 4 (Tuesday Sept. 16) - Velocity and acceleration The mathematics of motion Lecture 5 (Thursday Sept. 18) - Projectiles - Galileo and cannon balls Lecture 6 (Tuesday Sept. 19) - Intro to vectors - The velocity vector Lecture 7 (Thursday Sept. 25) - Circular motion - the acceleration vector Lecture 8 (Tuesday Sept. 30) - Simple Harmonic Motion Part 2 - Waves and Optics Lecture 9 (Thursday Oct. 2) - What is sound? What is music? Lecture 10 (Tuesday Oct. 7) - How the brain processes sound Lecture 11 (Thursday Oct. 9) - What is light Lecture 12 (Tuesday Oct. 14) - Waves and their propagation Lecture 13 (Thursday Oct. 16) - Reflection and refraction Lecture 14 (Tuesday Oct. 21) - How we see Lecture 15 (Thursday Oct. 23) - The images created by lenses Lecture 16 (Tuesday Oct. 28) - The eye and its limitations Part 3 Mechanics Lecture 17 (Thursday Oct. 30) - Why do waves form a beam? The theory of diffraction Lecture 18 (Tuesday Nov. 4) - The superposition of waves Lecture 19 (Thursday Nov. 6) - Force and pressure Lecture 20 (Tuesday Nov. 11) - Work and Energy Lecture 21 (Thursday Nov. 13) - Force, acceleration and kinetic energy Lecture 22 (Tuesday Nov. 18) - Momentum Lecture 23 (Thursday Nov. 20) - Energy and Force fields Lecture 24 (Tuesday Nov. 25) - Bending moments and forces in the human body Lecture 25 (Thursday Nov. 27) - Angular momentum Lecture 26 (Tuesday Dec. 2) - Modern Physics: Dealing with the ultimate illusions Assignments due @ 8:00 hr on Laboratories Reports due on next lab No. 1 (Lectures 1,2) Tues., Sept. 23 No 1 (The Pendulum)- Sept. 15-19 No. 2 (Lectures 3,4) Tues., Sept. 30 No 2 (Modeling Rebound)- Sept. 29-Oct. 3 No. 3 (Lectures 5,6) Tues., Oct. 7 No 3(Simple Harmonic Motion)- Oct. 13-17 No. 4 (Lectures 7,8) Tues., Oct. 14 No 4 (Geometrical Optics)- Oct. 27-Oct. 31 No. 5 (Lectures 9,10) Tues., Oct. 21 No 5 (Interference and Diffraction)- Nov. 10-14 No. 6 (Lectures 11,12) Tues., Oct. 28 No 6(Momentum)- Nov. 17-21 No. 7 (Lectures 13,14) Fri., Nov. 7 Make-up laboratories - Nov. 24-28 No. 8 (Lectures 15,16) Fri., Nov. 20 NOTE - Labs 5 & 6 are on consecutive weeks. No. 9 (Lectures 17,18,19) Mon., Nov. 17 Reports for lab 6 and all make-up labs are No. 10 (Lectures 20,21) Mon., Nov. 24 due on Mon. Dec. 1 at 18:00 - to be hand No. 11 (Lectures 22,23) Fri., Nov. 28 delivered to your demonstrator's office. No. 12 (Lectures 24,25) Fri., Dec. 5 MID-TERM EXAMINATION TUESDAY NOV. 4, 19:00-21:00 Mid-term covers lectures 1-12 assignments 1-6 inclusive, Laboratories 1,2,3 FINAL EXAMINATION - Covers whole course - (To be scheduled) This information is also available on the web at www.physics.mcgill.ca/~moore/P101/

Lectures The lectures introduce the phenomena to be studied in the course. Being introductory they cannot cover the subject material of the course to the same depth as the textbook. Rather they should leave you in a position where you can start on your assignments. If you find that you need more guidance to complete an assignment you should first consult the relevant sections of the textbook. For this purpose the lectures will refer to those sections. Complete lecture notes will be made available on the Web immediately after each lecture. It will therefore not be necessary for you to take notes, unless you find that this helps you to concentrate. In any case, an important part of the lectures will be demonstrations of phenomena, for which note-taking would be difficult. Attendance of the lectures is not mandatory. If you think that watching the professor make a fool of himself is a waste of your time then feel free to exercise your judgement. However, you should take into account that many of the visual and aural demonstrations, which may help you understand and remember the material, cannot be duplicated in the notes. Textbook In any course in physics the textbook should provide more subject depth than can be provided in the lectures. The textbook chosen for this course (i.e. "Hecht") is the most modern that can be found that includes a good selection of material relevant to the life sciences. It should therefore serve as a good permanent reference book for your further studies. (Yes, you will very likely need to know more physics than can be covered in this course, particularly if you ever intend to take the MCATS.) It is also the textbook for Physics 102B that many of you will be taking after this course. The greatest difficulty with Hecht as a textbook for this course is its relatively advanced treatment of optics. (The authour is a specialist in optics.) This is partially due to this material appearing in the text after the material that will be covered in 198-102B, thereby assuming a greater knowledge of physics than most of the students in the present course will have. For optics you may therefore have to depend more on the lecture notes than you will have to for the rest of the course. Tutorials If the lecture notes and the sample solutions in the textbook do not enable you to solve the assigned problems, and neither do your friends, then you are encouraged to make use of the tutorial sessions. We will be providing tutorial sessions at least every week-day afternoon on a variable schedule, with some morning sessions according to demand. Session times will be announced in class and posted on the Web as soon as they can be scheduled. Assignments The assignments will be distributed and graded by a computer-based system called Computer Assisted Personalized Approach (CAPA). This is an acquisition by the physics department from Michigan State University where it was created. It has been used very successfully at Dalhousie University in Halifax. This will be the fifth year of its use at McGill. However, because many of the problems are created new each year there might some glitches. Please be understanding. Central to the system is the creation of an individual assignment for each student. This is done by randomizing the numbers, and therefore the required responses, within any given set of problems. By entering CAPA on the internet (http://capa.physics.mcgill.ca) and entering your id (your student number) and your password (which will be assigned by e-mail) you can print out your individualized assignment. Once you have solved any of the questions you can call up CAPA again (it is wise to bookmark its address) and enter your answers. If an answer is incorrect you will be told so by the computer and given another chance. If you give yet another wrong answer the computer may give you a hint. You will be given a set number of chances before the computer judges you to have failed the question. If you get the correct answer within the allowed number of tries the computer will tell you so and give you full marks for that question, no matter how many tries you had. For more information see http://capa.physics.mcgill.ca/help.html or http://capa.physics.mcgill.ca/FAQ.html (for Frequently Asked Questions). Assignments will be posted on CAPA at least two weeks before the due date. This information is also available on the web at www.physics.mcgill.ca/~moore/P101/

Laboratories The laboratory exercises are mandatory. Missing a lab or failing to hand in a lab report will lead to a K for the course. This is not only in keeping with the general policy of McGill regarding laboratory exercises. It is also necessary if the course is to be accepted as the equivalent of most physics courses at this level at other universities in North America. Therefore if you cannot do a particular laboratory exercise on the scheduled date you must arrange with your laboratory instructor to do it in some other session. If you cannot do a laboratory during its scheduled run then you must contact the course instructor to do a make-up laboratory, scheduled for the last week of lectures (see timetable). The laboratory exercises are meant to provide hands-on experience with the phenomena introduced in the course. They therefore determine the sequence of the lecture material that introduces these phenomena. The sequence of these laboratory exercises is, itself, determined by availability of the laboratory equipment, which must be shared with other courses, and the order of difficulty which students have experienced in the past in carrying out these exercises. Instruction sheets for the first laboratory exercise are appended to this hand-out. Instruction sheets for the remainder of the sessions will be handed out in your first laboratory session. As well, nstructions sheets for all the laboratories are posted on the Web. Reports may be submitted in hand-written form or as computer print-out. For your work to be credited it must be identified with your name and student number. Examinations The mid-term examination will be a two hours and will cover the first half of the course. The questions will be very similar to some of the questions that will have already appeared on the first 6 assignments. Because of the possibility of having CAPA questions answered by someone else, the assignments are worth only 10% of the overall grade. However, it is very important that you attempt these questions honestly in that not only the mid-term but also the final examination, which will cover the whole course, will be based on the assignment questions. You should also honestly answer the questions raised in your laboratory report. This is because the mid-term and the final examination will have about a 15% component of questions relating to your laboratory exercises. Final examinations from previous years are available on the Web site for the course. Instructors Office Hours Essentially I have an open-door policy. If you show up and I am in my office (Room 220 RPB), or my laboratory nearby (Room 234), I will quite willingly see you to discuss any problem with the course (and even some not related to the course). During the Fall term I expect to be in my office or laboratory most times Tuesday to Tuesday from about 08:00 to 18:00 except, of course, when I am lecturing, preparing to lecture or cleaning up after lecturing, which will be from 11:00 to 13:00 Thursdays and Tuesdays. Fridays I have reserved for meetings and other off-campus activities but it is still possible that I will be around. In any case I will try to leave a note on my office door as to when I can be expected to return. R.B. Moore September 1, 2003 Mandatory Statement to be included in all course outlines at McGill: McGill University values academic integrity. Therefore, all students must understand the meaning and consequences of cheating, plagiarism and other academic offences under the Code of Student Conduct and Disciplinary Procedures (seewww.mcgill.ca/integrity for more information).

This information is also available on the web at www.physics.mcgill.ca/~moore/P101/