Welcome to Physics!
Physics
Sean Lally, teacher
2017 – 2018
A and C blocks
Room 360
Office: 342 (across from student mailboxes)
Availability: X blocks, 3 PM
slally@parkschool.net
410-339-4104
Hello there, physics phriends!
Welcome to a new school year and your new favorite class, Physics, with your
humble host, Sean Lally.
I am thrilled to be sharing some of the big ideas of physics with you this term. We will draw our class content from the following areas:
Mechanics – motion (kinematics),
forces (dynamics), gravitation, energy
Waves – mechanical
waves (like sound) and electromagnetic waves (like light), optics
Electricity & Magnetism – static electricity,
circuits, magnetism, electromagnetism, induction
Our first semester will find us
largely delving into mechanics, first with a discussion on units and
velocity. After this, we will discuss acceleration,
as a preparation to a big section on forces.
On grades:
There will be several opportunities for grades this year:
Quizzes
Homework
Tests
Projects
Lab reports (formal and informal)
Everything is based on points. Typically, the point breakdown looks like
this:
Quizzes: 20-30 points
Homework: 10-15 points
Tests:
75-100 points
Projects: 40-50 points
Lab reports: 40 points (rubric given in advance)
The goal is for your grade to reflect
independent work at home and in-class evaluation in roughly equal amounts.
Grading
scheme:
Your grade will be determined by
dividing your points earned by the maximum number of points earned in your
class. After that, we'll use a typical 90-80-70 grading scheme, with +’s
and –‘s for 90-91 and 88-89, etc.. Extra credit is permitted (if and when
it is needed), but you'll need to help come up with the idea(s) for it. The goal of any extra credit would be to find
another way to demonstrate what has been most difficult for you.
I will assign problem and question sets regularly, but not all these will not be collected. Primarily, they are used to help you study material and see what concepts I find to be most valuable (on quizzes, tests, and in general).
Academic
Honesty
Homework, lab reports, quizzes and
tests must reflect YOUR work only. If,
on a homework or lab report, you quote someone else’s work, you must cite it
appropriately. Laboratory experiments,
while usually performed as part of a small group, must still be completed on
your own. This means that graphs and
data tables must be your OWN work – do not share data tables or graphs
electronically. Be sure that you have
your own copy of all data before the lab ends.
As teachers, we are trying to make sure that you can do each part of an
experiment or write-up on your own.
While collaboration is usually a part of the scientific process, and
each participant brings individual talents and backgrounds, every member must
know how to generate the “nuts and bolts” of the report and must be able to write
scientifically. These are some of the skills
we focus on this year.
The blog
You will find course information here:
parkphysics1718.blogspot.com
I use this blog for my personal notes, physics readings, and to get important information to you. If there is important stuff from the board, I'll take an image and post it on the blog. However, don't view this as a substitute for good note-taking. The blog will have some detail, but also at times, only a skeleton outline of notes. Sometimes these notes will be up on the blog well in advance of class, and sometimes, well, they won't.
Needed for
class
A scientific/graphing calculator
A quad notebook, ideally bound
A healthy sense of curiosity
And, ideally, a sense of humor
Welcome to Physics!
(Just because Richard Feynman was cool. Watch this and be prepared to discuss it next
class.)
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