Exam 2 Part 1 retake

The Exam 2 part 1 retake scores have been posted on eLearning.  Most people (but not all) improved their score.  If your retake score was higher than the original score, then I averaged the two.  Otherwise, I made no changes.  The overall average on Exam 2 (both parts) after the retake was 70%.

Exam 2

Exam 2 scores have been posted on eLearning.  The average for Part 1 was 54% and the average for Part 2 was 78%.  These were weighted equally to give a composite average of about 66%.  The scores that show on eLearning are a maximum of 10 for Part 1 and a maximum of 40 for Part 2.

As I have already discussed in class, I will give you the option of retaking Part 1 on Friday, March 23.  The questions will be very similar, but not exactly the same, as the original exam.  There will be no retake on Part 2.  If you don't choose to retake or make less than the first take, then your grade will not change.  If you improve on the retake, then your new Part 1 score will be the average of the first take and the retake.

If you did not do well on Part 1, then this is a chance for you to significantly improve your grade while also improving your understanding (which could also help on the final exam).  I hope you will take full advantage of this opportunity.

Exam 1 grades

Exam 1 grades have been posted on eLearning.  You can also see your score on part 1 (out of 10) by going to mybama.  I counted parts 1 and 2 equally.  The average came to 64.4% and I then added 5.6 points to each exam to bring the class average up to 70.  I'll return the exams in class on Tues, Feb. 14.

Exam 1

Some changes in the schedule:

• The date for exam 1 has been moved from next Tues to next Thursday (Feb. 9).  
• A practice exam has been posted on the class website under the 'exams' folder.  The answers (not solutions) will be posted a couple of days before the test.
• The homework due date has been moved to Tues, Feb. 7.
• There will be no quiz this Friday, but there will be some class work on Newton's laws.
  The quiz on CH 5&6 will be at the start of class on Tues.
  

Help Center

The Help Center hours have now been established for the PH10X courses.  The schedule (including room) is found here (also linked on the class web site):

http://physics.ua.edu/schedules/HelpCenter.pdf

Friday Quiz

Just a reminder that there will be a ~10 min quiz tomorrow (Friday, Jan. 20).  The question will be similar to one of the Quest homework questions.  You are not allowed a formula sheet for the weekly quizzes (but you can have one for the hour exams).  So, you will need to remember the basic equations for 1-D motion, including constant acceleration (with gravity as an example).  I'll take 30 min or so at the beginning of class to discuss the homework, then give the quiz.

Email me or stop by my office if you have questions.

Using Quest

Some comments about using Quest:


- You get unlimited attempts at answering problems.  However, the credit you get for answering it correctly diminishes the more attempts you make.

- You can get negative points for multiple choice questions if you have too many misses.

- Use the correct notation when entering powers of ten.  For example, Avagadro's number would be entered as 6.02e23.  I don't think that 6.02x10^23 will work.

- Be careful about precision.  Quest states that an answer within 1% will work, so an answer with 3 digits should suffice.   However, if you have an answer that involves several factors and you round off one or more of the factors too much, then your final answer will not be sufficiently precise even if you give it with 3 or more digits.

- The accuracy of your answer also depends on the accuracy of the constant(s) you may have to use in the problem.  If not given in the problem, then there is a list of constants in the Quest help section.

-  Look at the Quest help section for general advice on using Quest.