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AP Physics Notes and Assignments 2011-2012 School Year |
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AP Physics Notes and Assignments 2011-2012 School Year |
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Welcome AP Physics Mechanics. Now that the College Board has seen fit to charge full price for each of the halves of the AP Physics C examination, we will concentrate on the mechanics section. Those of you who are more ambitious, or who took the Mechanics class last year, will have the opportunity to study and learn about Electricity and Magnetism as well. I would like to say that this is going to be non stop fun, that, after this, you will wonder how life could possibly hold any meaning. I'd like to tell you that you will walk out of this class every day glowing and in awe. Somehow as a result of taking this class, everything else will pale in comparison and you will spend every instant that you are not here in room 108 wishing that you could be. However, such a promise would be preposterous, for even though every student who has taken the class has come out feeling that way, to assume that all of you will feel the same, is, of course, highly speculative at best. In truth, it is my hope that I stretch you intellectually and push you to think in ways that you haven't before. The upside of this is that you will get smarter, the downside is that there will be times where you are frustrated and may feel like quitting. It is my belief, you may disagree if you wish (everyone has the right to be wrong), that challenges are what give life meaning and richness. If I am right, you are likely to have a very meaningful and rich year. Lastly, I would like to thank you in advance for stepping up to take this class. I know you don't have to push yourselves and I am aware that for most of you it is your senior year of high school. I will try to make your experience here interesting as well as enriching, and maybe even speak in more than one tone.
The good news is that there are no tests in this class. Most of your grade will be based on how you perform on the major and minor rewards you take. You will have other grades as well, such as gifts of knowledge, delightful exercises in applying physics to real world applications, super fun and cool investigations, and participation. Rewards Every Friday you will get a reward for the knowledge you have gained for that week and/or section of physics. You simply fill in the knowledge that you gained as it pertains to the reward in question and, blammo, you get points ... lots of points. All major rewards are worth one billion points (that's right one billion or 109 or 1,000,000,000). Since the tests are hard, all of the tests will be curved and then normalized to the 1,000,000,000 point scale. The scores you receive will be in tens of millions. So, a score of 79 on a test is really 790,000,000 points! Wow, you're going to get a lot of points in this class. Minor rewards may even be given more frequently than one a week if you are lucky. Minor rewards, however, are only worth 100,000,000 points. During the course of the semester, you will have about 5 major rewards and 15 minor rewards. Gifts of Knowledge Some of my more cynical students refer to this as homework, but that has such a negative connotation. Most of your gifts of knowledge can be found on this website, complete with solution sets. Of course, you could copy all of the answers from the solution set and turn it in as though you did your own work, but then you wouldn't be receiving the gift of knowledge and you would end up not getting much of any reward, come reward day. Not to mention, you might "accidentally" copy some extraneous stuff from the solution set that gives away that you copied it (and we don't want to have any more "slips of integrity," do we?). Throughout the semester, the total number of points from your gifts of knowledge should come to about 500,000,000 points. Not quite a major reward, but nothing to sneeze at. Delightful Experiences Each semester you will get to participate in a delightful experience where you apply the knowledge you have gained to make something real. First semester, the delightful experience will require you to construct a draw bridge (details will follow later in the semester). Second semester, you will build cardboard boats and race them across Tavern Bay. Each delightful experience will be worth 1,000,000,000 points, since the experience, although very delightful, isn't enough of a reward on its own. Cool Investigations In physics, we don't trust what we are told or even what we think has to be true. Oh no, we need to find a way to evaluate whether what we think is true, is actually true. As a consequence, we investigate. Sometimes I will tell you what to investigate, but other times someone in class will ask an interesting question that EVERYONE wants to know the answer to and you will form groups to determine the correct answer. During the course of the semester you will accumulate about 1,000,000,000 points this way. Participation This is my completely subjective appraisal of how I think your presence in my class has enhanced or diminished the quality of the learning experience. Pluses include, but are not limited to: good attendance, asking relevant questions, being attentive, responding when asked a question, etc. Minuses include, but are not limited to: poor attendance, sleeping in class, being disruptive, carrying on conversations while I'm trying to teach, questioning my authority as font of all human knowledge, etc. Participation grades can range from -500,000,000 to +500,000,000 points. Your Grade Determination: If 10 billion points are possible, then
Internet It is expected that you use the internet book as your resource for instruction outside of the classroom. You are expected to email me with questions and participate in chat room discussions when assigned. Questions? Send comments to Like I care Main Home Page |