Physics 2020: Fall '12

General Physics 2 (Electricity & Magnetism, and Optics)

MWF 11:00-11:50 Duane G1B20 (Section 100)

Exams and Grades

General information:

If you miss more than 2 labs, or the final, you can't receive a passing grade!

We will use iClickers during lectures, to help you learn the material. Your iClicker responses count only as bonus (extra credit) points: they REDUCE exam weight by up to a max of 14% of midterm exam total (i.e. 5% of your course grade).

Detailed course grade information is available here
For further information, please see the Syllabus.
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First midterm is Thursday Sep 27, 7:30 - 9:15 pm, in our regular clasroom.

Students who have informed us about their academic needs for special accomodation during the exam, will receive an Email about their Exam location. If you expect such an arrangement but did not receive an Email, please contact Prof. McElroy (not Prof. Pollock) ASAP!!

You may bring one side of 8.5 in. x 11 in. paper for the first exam, with your own handwritten notes (written by you!) Don't write on the back (but, for midterm #2, you will be allowed to!) Calculators with scientific notation are allowed and sometimes needed. (Of course, no phones, internet access, "electronic crib sheets", etc!). We trust you to understand and follow the CU honor code. Please respect that trust! It's a large class, and we realize there may be some temptations - we are doing our best to make this class valuable and worthy of your honorable behaviour

Here's (roughly, it's not written yet!) what the exam cover page will look like. (There are no other constants or equations provided than what you see there, so if you feel you need something else, put it on your crib sheet. )

The exam will have multiple choice and long answer questions. (At the moment, the long answer amounts to about 40% of the points, though this may change a bit) The focus on Exam 1 is material covered up through Mon Sep 24, which means basically Ch. 16 and 17 of our text. As always, anything covered in class, the text, lecture notes, homeworks, or labs is all fair game. Our focus is on conceptual understanding, we won't have too much "plug-n-chug" on our exams. See below (under "review suggestions" if you want to see some sample questions from an old 2020 exam I wrote a long time ago)

CH 16: You might expect questions on static electricity (including attraction and repulsion, electroscopes, insulators and conductors, polarization, and conservation of charge. Be prepared to e.g. explain why objects polarize/attract/repel in terms of movement of + and - charges), Coulomb's law (qualitatively and quantitatively, including the vector nature of addition of foces. Can you superpose force vectors?), The electric field - how to calculate it, given charge sources, how to use it to figure out forces on test charges, and particularly how to draw and interpret "field line" diagrams.
CH 17: You might expect questions on how to calculate voltage (or change in voltage) in situations with uniform fields, or with multiple point charges. You might have to interpret equipotential diagrams, and know the connection between voltage and electric fields. You should be able to relate voltage differences to work done on a test charge. You should be able to use the unit of energy called the "electron volt", and in general know the units of the various quantities we compute. There could be questions about capacitors, including what the E field looks like inside, what the voltage is like inside, and the relation between charge, voltage, and capacitance. (but not about dielectrics, for this exam.)

In general, try to be careful about your use of the technical words we are learning: don't mix up E-field with electric force (or energy!), don't mix up electrical potential (which is Voltage) with electrical potential energy (which is energy, the same unit as work, or any other potential energy). Don't mix up "charge" with "E-field" (or E-field lines). Don't mix up E-field lines with equipotential lines. We also expect you to remember the basic laws from Phys 2010 that we have been talking about in class and using in homeworks - in particular, Newton's 3 laws, (and universal law of gravity), the work-energy principle, conservation of energy, the formulas (and basic meaning of) potential energy and kinetic energy, and the definition of work.

Review suggestions: First, do the obvious things (like doing the extra questions on the CAPA due exam day, and the lab/review problems given every week on labs, and the concept tests that I post before/after everyclass. Sometimes there are more in those files than we get to in lecture, which makes for extra practice problems)

I have two sources of "extra problems" for you that you might not be aware of. First, see the "Questions" at the end of each chapter, just BEFORE the "Problems" pages. These are quite good!! Second, check out the "Giancoli's Physics" link at the bottom left of all our course pages, he has some worthwhile sample problems (look for the more conceptual ones, that's going to be more like the style of our exam!)

Last but not least, due to requests from some of you, I am posting an old "sample exam" to give you some ideas of the style of my tests. But be aware, these questions are from a test I wrote a decade ago, so expect some changes in style! (They were a little more "formula-centric", perhaps, than now) Still, they may give you a sense of my testing approach... Also realize this is slightly shortened exam. In particular expect lots more long-answer questions on the midterm than on this practice test (As for solutions - you need to figure out how to CHECK YOURSELF, not look to me to tell you if you're right or wrong. But, I understand the desire to get feedback - so, here are answers [not solutions, just answers!] (Don't peek till after you've worked it all out for yourself!)