Physics 115 Section 0201

Instructor: Kara Hoffman, PhD
Assistant Professor of Physics
Office: 4336 Toll Physics Building
Phone: 301-405-7263
Email: kara@icecube.umd.edu
Office hours: by appointment
Teaching assistant: Ken Hsieh

Inquiry into Physics
the philosophy of Phys115

Scientists learn about the physical world around us through experimentation. They draw conclusions from data and continually refine their ideas. They design new experiments to address new questions as they arise.

In this course, you will not be memorizing facts listed in a textbook. Instead, you will act as a scientist and learn physics as a researcher would...you will discover facts for yourself! You will conduct experiments and learn how to describe your observations through words, equations and graphs. Your fellow students may draw different conclusions from the same experiment. You will learn how to present your results and defend your observations. Perhaps you will decide that your fellow students were right after all, or perhaps you can think of a way to test which ideas are right and which are wrong.

Syllabus

There is no textbook for the course, however, there is a lab manual, which you can print out here.

You are expected to keep a notebook and take a lot of notes. This will act as your textbook. Since this is a course in "inquiry" as well as "physics", make sure you record all of your ideas, right and wrong, as well as your data. You should be able to reconstruct the evolution of your thinking. You will be asked on homework and exams not only for your answers, but how you arrived at your answer.

Your grade will be based on:

Exam 1: 20%
Exam 2: 20%
Final exam: 25%
Homework: 25%
Notebook and class participation: 10%

Due to the nature of this class, attendance AND participation are absolutely mandatory. After you accumulate 2 unexcused absences, you will loose 2% of your grade for every class missed.

Your notebook will be collected at random times throughout the semester and graded. I will not announce the collection dates ahead of time, so be sure that you always have your notebook with you. Your notebook should contain your graded homework and exams, your lab manual with pages for the experiments you've completed filled in, your notes, data, and any relevant data analyses such as graphs. You should also have plenty of additional paper so you can write down your ideas.

Homework

Homework #1

Professor Hoffman's research

I am an experimental particle physicist. I work on experiments designed to uncover the most fundamental particles that make up the universe around us, and the forces that act on them. This field of research has a long history. Long ago the Greeks hypothesized that everything was made of earth, air, fire, and water. Later we came to understand that everything was made of atoms. Now we know that atoms are not indivisible, but are made up of electrons, protons, and neutrons, and protons and neutrons are made of "quarks". We continue to delve deeper and refine our understanding of nature, much as you will do in our course.

Also, importantly, we learn what we don't know. Can you believe that we know that we don't know what most of the matter in the universe is made of? In addition to refining our understanding, we also learn what questions to ask, and we design experiments that might give us clues that will answer those questions.