Yesterday's CPS session is UP, plus the doc cam file.

You can now look at the solution to yesterday's CPS questions, including the ones we looked at and talked about without showing the answer. Look in the Linsky files, with the V for Vendetta icon.

Also, your CPS scores are all uploaded and current, all the way up to yesterday's lecture. Look in your My Grades page.

You can also review the friction calculation from yesterday's doc cam work. Look in the lecture blurbs folder in Webcourses.

Exercises I like in chapter 3.

Here are some exercises I like from chapter 3.

1. Exercises 1-16 on p. 54
2. plus exercises 21-14 on p. 55
3. Examples 3.2.1-3.2.4 in the problem solving manual, Problem Solving for Physics: A World View.

Exercise 21 on p. 55 is a brain burner.

On Monday, I will post MY written solutions for these and other exercises, so that you can check your work. They'll be in the glass display case in the third floor of MAP, across from room 337. Here is a photo of it.

Homework 4 is UP

Go work on the vectors in homework #4. It is ready in Webcourses now.

Wednesday lecture cancelled; see you Friday.

Due to health-related emergency, I must cancel lecture for Wednesday only.

We will resume classes again on Friday, Jan. 30, and continue building up the concepts of accelerations on curved trajectories.

See you on Friday.

Homework 3 is UP.

Homework 3 is now UP and running, due on Wedneesday, 1:30 PM, as usual. It has a pair of brain-burners that you MIGHT find easier if you have some graph paper to work on!

Apparently Webcourses was off the air until after midnight!

Webcourses trouble; HW 3 later tonight

I am trying to set up your guys' homework, but Webcourses appears to be off the air. I will try again later tonight after supper.

Week in review podcast

I just created a "Week in Review" podcast for you all, covering Wednesday and Friday lectures. It is available in UCF's iTunes U service,

http://itunes.ucf.edu

It will light up your iTunes program, then direct you to the "UCF on iTunes U" entry. Click College of Sciences, then Physical Science. There you will find the Week in Review podcast, plus miscellaneous PDFs. The week in review podcast is actually a digital video, 17 minutes, narrated by me. I will be producing one each weekend.

New doc cam files

The doc cam files from Wednesday and Friday's lectures are now UP. Look in "Blurbs from lecture" with the Monster's Inc. icon.

Homework 2 is ready to go.

You can now go to work on Homework 2, due on Monday, 1:30 PM. Look in the Homework folder in the home page, with the yellow pickup truck icon.

Don't forget to go read the extra readings in Nature that I assigned Friday for Monday's lecture. They are in the file called, "That, Detective, is the right question." Look in the lecture blurbs folder with the Monsters' Inc. icon.

S.I. schedule

Supplemental Instruction schedule:

Day	Time	Location
Monday	12:00 - 12:50 PM	HPA106
Tuesday	11:30 AM - 12:20 PM	MAP108
Wednesday	2:30 - 3:20 PM	COMM114
Friday	12:00 - 12:50 PM	BA225

Study assignment for Friday

Tomorrow we will be working on Newton's 2nd and 3rd Laws, in chapter 3. To prepare and read ahead, you can eyeball these figures about vectors:

1. Fig. 3-6
2. Fig. 3-7
3. Fig. 3-8
4. Fig. 3-11

If you feel bold, you can follow that up by looking over Exercises 2, 4 and 8 at the end of chapter 3.

New doc cam files

There are two new scans of the doc cam work we did together on Friday, our little workout with free fall.

Look in the lecture blurbs in Webcourses, with the icon of Mike from Monsters, Inc.

How to post into Discussions for HW tips

There is a new discussion area, "Motion, acceleration and trajectories," where you can post questions about HW and class notes etc. When you do, it is helpful if you can make it easy for others, including me, to understand exactly what you are asking about. Here are some tips:

1. In the Subject box, type in something specific like
   The new speed v2 in exercise 6 is eluding me
   instead of
   Help me, please!
   although the latter IS more dramatic.
2. In the message area, be even more specific. Jot down on scratch paper the phrase or equation you have a question about, and then type in as much of it as you can.
3. If you reply to someone's query, do not give away the answer, but think of it as coaching. I.e., you coach them up a little bit, but THEY do the execution.

CPS data from Wednesday lecture is UP.

If you look in your Webcourses My Grades page, you will now see the CPS data from Wednesday's lecture, the 4th lecture of the semester.

1. "L4 answered" will go into your 24 CPS points, as described in the syllabus.
2. "L4 correct" factors into the 4 CPS bonus points, also mentioned in the syllabus.

Each time we have a CPS session -- most lectures -- you will see these scores. E.g, from the nth lecture, "Ln answered" and "Ln correct" in Webcourses, as soon after the lecture as I can get to it.

Homework 1 ready to go!

I just activated Homework 1, in Webcourses. I set it to allow four attempts, and to report your best score in the gradebook.

It is due on Wednesday, 1:30 PM.

Look for the yellow pickup truck icon on the home page.

CPS registration troubles: double registration, hand-me-down clickers

Students, I recently recieved this email alert from the UCF Faculty Center, concerning some CPS troubles.

---

We have been seeing some confusion this week with students who are using their CPS clickers for the first time this semester.

1. Many students are coming into your classes after having purchased used clickers from either the bookstore or a fellow student. Before they can register that clicker in your class, they must first have the previous owner delete the serial number from that previous account.

2. When students register their clicker using CPS Online (going straight to eInstruction's website to register) AND later register their clicker for another class using the Webcourses powerlink, they may see an error message that their clicker is assigned to another user. This is because the powerlink between Webcourses and eInstruction uses WebCT IDs for usernames, which may be different from the original account username. Some students may become confused enough to pay twice. This problem can occur for faculty also who move from using CPS Online to using the Webcourses powerlink. If your original account is different from your WebCT ID, you won't see the new class by logging in with your old username.

The customer service folks at eInstruction can solve this problem quickly; just remind students to contact them.

---

I think most of you are squared away -- but 3 out of 113 today could not click with us, and this might be the reason. As I mentioned after lecture, contacting Einstruction's tech support will get you sorted out right quick.

CPS sessions in the Linsky Files.

If you want to review the CPS questions for study or to double check your class notes, then look through the PDFs in the Webcourses folder known as the Linsky Files. Each CPS session will be summarized, based on Ed Linsky's CPS answers.

Look for the "Call me V" icon in the home page.

Widgets for Mac users

If you are a Mac user, you have Dashboard Widgets of all kinds. I made a nice one that you can slip into your dashboard and keep a very rapid watch on announcements here. Here is the logic behind it:

1. Announcements is our eyeball on Webcourses. It is cumbersome to log in to the My UCF portal and Webcourses to check for new assignments etc., and Webcourses, lovely though it is, does have reliability issues. Blogspot is never down and it loads rapidly.
2. The widget is your computer eyeball on Announcements. Flick into your dashboard, and this widget tells you if any news is posted here on Announcements. Takes 2 seconds.
3. Bottom line: extremely efficient communication channel

To get the widget, go into the Wbcourses home page and go down the page to the Widgets folder.

Windows users -- sorry, but I am not an expert of Bill Gates technology, so you might be able to get a good widget, but I can't make one for you. The Widgets area in Webcourses has a link for you, if you want to mess around with Konfabulator.

Yesterday's CPS bonus point is UP.

I just uploaded your early CPS bonus point from yesterday's lecture. Good.

Tomorrow is the deadline for getting CPS registered up. We will have regular (not bonus) CPS activity in tomorrow's lecture about accelerations. Be ready!

CPS looking good

OK, about half of you have registered up your CPS units. YAY!

One bonus point today for you if you can get it registered before class. Deadline for "official" CPS activity is Wednesday.

Today's CPS bonus is UP

I posted today's early CPS bonus point in Webcourses, for the dozen or so students who were clicking in class this afternoon. Look in your My Grades page in Webcourses.

For everybody else, get your CPS clicker registered up for Monday, and you will grab a bonus point then!

Have a great weekend.

CPS roster is synchronizing properly, all systems GO.

I just synchronized the CPS roster, from Webcourses down to my laptop, and the first student is in there, looking just right.

So the registration mechanism is working properly. Go get registered now as quick as you can, and you will be ready for CPS activities in lecture tomorrow.

Image: Black Hills gold, an alloy of gold, copper and silver.

Go in and register your clicker now!

OK, the CPS registration page is now ready to go. Look on the course home page in Webcourses, and follow the instructions.

One bonus point per day on your semester grade if you can get registered early: this Friday and next Monday. Next Wednesday is the deadline for getting registered.

Friday and Monday, we will try out CPS with some easy Chuck Norris facts and one or two calculations, just to get the hang of it. But Wednesday, our real physics questions will start in, so be ready by then for sure.

CPS registration

We will be registering CPS response pads through our Webcourses page. I have not set that up yet, but I expect to do so by tonight, and we will do some trial runs tomorrow in class if you can get registered up.

So keep an eye on Announcements and when the Webcourses registration page is ready, I will post an announcement here.