Semesters taught: Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020
General course information:
Fall 2020 Syllabus
Course design philosophy:
My main goals with this course for the Fall 2020 semester included three main components:
- Starting with in-person teaching but planning ahead for a transition to online teaching.
- Finding the correct balance of in-class discussion and flipped-classroom videos.
- Including regular and explicit discussion of calculus.
My solutions to meet these goals were as follows:
- Each student purchased a small electronics kit (approximately $60) to conduct labs from home.
- Approximately one at-home video per week and in-class discussion combined with shared time to work exercises.
- Lots of emphasis on calculus with supporting videos that show how to apply calculus to solving problems.
Selected course materials:
Due to the significant interruptions caused by the COVID pandemic during the spring 2020 semester, I took extra time at the beginning of this semester to review foundational principles of PHY 201 to help bring students up to speed for PHY 202. We also spent a week discussing and working problems on the universal law of gravitation, which provided a natural segue to discussion of Coulomb’s law and electric fields of point charges. Flipped-classroom videos for Fall 2020:
Videos of live sessions:
- Applying Gauss’s law
- Introduction to Ohm’s law and circuit topology
- Analysis of series and parallel circuits
- Introduction to Kirchoff’s laws
- More Kirchoff
Flipped-classroom videos:
- Review of 2D kinematics
- Universal law of gravitation
- The electric field
- Calculus: the electric field of an infinite line of charges
- Calculus: the electric field of an infinite plane of charges
- Introduction to Gauss’s law
- More Gauss’s law
- Capacitors
- Capacitors in circutis
- Calculus: Gauss’s law and integration by parts
- Programming with if statements and loops
- Calculus: analysis of RC circuits
- Introduction to magnetic fields
- Introduction to Faraday’s law
New inquiry-based labs developed under the Fine Teaching Award:
These labs were developed under the support of the Fine Teaching Award during the Fall 2019 semester, where they were simultaneously implemented. The following laboratory exercises are presented in a similar fashion to those for the PHY 201 inquiry-based labs. An important aspect of the design of these labs is the opportunity for students to work on projects over multiple weeks, which serves to reinforce concepts from the previous week, allows us to build up to more complex projects, and gives students an authentic experience, important aspects of contemporary laboratory pedagogy. This method also works well for remote learning where communication is less efficient and students need more time with new concepts.
The first part of these labs are conducted in the vein of more traditional physics labs, while the last three labs focus on computer programming, motors, and sensors.
Traditional labs:
- Lab 1: Analysis of random processes
- Lab 2: Electric circus
Arduino-based programming labs:
- Lab 3: Optical communication devices
- Part A: Introduction to the Arduino
- Part B: Using the Arduino to control external circuits
- Part C: Using inputs to control LEDs through software
- Lab 4: The photodiode: an integrated LED and photodiode communicator
- Lab 5: Controlling motors and producing sound: the Arduino music-maker
Examples of student work:
Videos of student projects:
Lab 3, Gabriel Rodriguez
Lab 4, Jonathan Quijada
Lab 5, Samantha Stabinsky <— this one is great!
Lab reports:
Lab 3, Camryn Shilling
Lab 4, Alexis Mastrelli
Lab 5, Haley Reukauf