Whooops

Exam grades are correct...

but...

semester total and semester grade are incomplete -- I forgot to add in your bonus points! Uh oh.

I will fix it up this morning, no worries.

Semester grades are up.

Your semester grades are now UP. I will send them to the registrar tomorrow.

No scantron news

It is past 5 PM, and no data back from test scoring. So we must wait until Monday, maybe even Tuesday for scantron results.

Clicker correct bonus (4)

If you answered 26 questions correctly, you earned the bonus for clicker activity, per syllabus. It is 4 bonus points. Fewer than 26 correct: no bonus.

Clicker points are up.

What a test!

Your clicker question is now graded and UP. Look in the "..Final exam SMA" row on your My Grades page in Webcourses.

That was a tough question, but a decent fraction of the class did nab it. You get either 2 points or zero points, and these are bonus points.

Scantrons will go over to the test scoring service asap. We will probably have to wait until Monday for those scores.

So right now your Final Exam score looks kind of lonely, either 2 points or zero points. But as soon as we get scantrons back, that final exam row will fill in nicely.

Time for everybody to rest and relax a bit.

Some clicker bonus points are up.

I have been messing with the grade book this morning, lots of cleanup and putting things together.

1. Early clicker bonus points: for the three lectures A11, A12 and A13, you get one point for being registered. All but ten of you got at least one bonus point. Good.
2. Semester bonus subtotal: right now it just counts up the clicker bonus points, but we have other bonus points coming in, so stay tuned. NOTE: bonus points on exam questions are up in the total for the exam. This means Exam 2.
3. ..Exam 2 SMA: I have computed your bonus for question 46.
   1. one point for clicking, even if you had an incorrect answer.
   2. two points if you clicked in a basic, true answer.
   3. three points if you clicked in a complicated, true answer.
4. Exam 2: this now adds up the "..Exam 2 scantron" and "..Exam 2 SMA" scores. It is your complete Exam 2 score.
5. Total semester points is now activated. It adds up regular points right now, from HW, clicker and two exams, but not the bonus points yet. Still to come: one big chunk of points from the final.

Plus I re-arranged some of the rows to make it all look simpler.

Add up semester total (regular points) and semester bonus points subtotal, divide by 136, and look that up in the percentage column of the syllabus grades table. That will give you an idea where you are grade-wise right now, if I were to calculate semester grades today.

Clicker bonus now figurable.

The number of clicker questions you have correct is now active on your My Grades page in Webcourses. If this number is 75% or higher, you nab 4 bonus points.

Lots of nabbing going on. :)

Homework 19, GO!

Homework 19 is now GO for launch.

Clickers pointage is activated; estimate current position.

Students, I just activated the "Clickers pointage" row and a little further down, the "Clickers answered subtotal" row on your My Grades page in Webcourses. The pointage is explained on the syllabus.

The pointage row reflects the points you would earn out of 25 possible on clickers for your semester grade. Remember, I will round this UP to the nearest whole number when I actually do the semester grades on Friday or so.

You can estimate your current grade state by adding up

1. the two exam scores,
2. HW pointage and
3. clickers pointage,

then dividing by 136. Look up this percentage on the syllabus.

There are some odds and ends to fix up, like question 46 from Exam 2 (still not finished!), bonus points etc., but the three figures above will give you a percentage pretty close to what your grade would be if I were to award semester grades today, instead of after the final exam. I estimate that 48 out of 57 students on the roster have at least a C- or higher right now, going into the final exam.

Remember, though: we still have HW and clickers this week, plus the final, so the percentages today can still change, especially due to the final exam.

Chuck Norris Mega-Review Homework

As promised, the Chuck Norris Mega-Review homework, which will be converted to one or two bonus points, will be open for business at 8 AM today. You get five attempts. Do not burn off all your attempts today, though.

The homework is a review of previous questions and a few new questions mixed in.

Homework and podcasts are ready

Homework 18 is ready for you, mainly conceptual questions.

Also, today's podcasts are up.

Who is spinning?

APOD Image: star trails over the Pico del Teide, on Tenerife in the Canary Islands.

It is a deep question: How can one be sure whether Earth spins or the vault of stars is spinning? Does the dynamical state of the stars affect what we observe here as to accelerations and inertia?

Homework 17 is ready, has some brain burners.

The last four question in Homework 17, now activated, gradually move from basic to brain burner. It will be a challenge to get the last one on the money. Think very carefully about transporting heat and assume energy is conserved... no heat energy disappears.

Review activity for final exam

During a regular semester, there is

1. a last Friday lecture of the semester,
2. a last Monday lecture of the semester,
3. then Exam Week begins the next day, a Tuesday.

We do the Chuck Norris Mega-Review homework assignment between Friday and the start of exam week, a nice long set of 3.5 days. We do a Chuck Norris Mega-Combo Review on clickers on that last Monday. Works well.

This Summer A is way smooshed up, schedule-wise, so I am going to put together a slightly different review activity schedule. Here we go:

1. Chuck Norris Mega-Review HW in Webcourses, will open for business on Tuesday morning, 8 AM. I will set it to 5 attempts. Do not burn off all your attempts, but print out the first attempt and use it as a study guide with a friend or study group. Pace yourself so that you can practice Tuesday and Wednesday lecture material, and use your 4th and 5th attempts after Wednesday lecture.
2. Tuesday lecture on electricity and magnetism, regular HW on Tuesday night.
3. Wednesday lecture on quantum physics, regular HW on Wednesday night.
4. Thursday, 2:00 - 2:15 PM, we will do a Chuck Norris Mega-Combo Review in class on clickers, maybe 10 questions, with plenty of time to work with your neighbor, sort through the concepts, check calculations etc.
5. 2:20 PM, start final exam, at which time you will crush the final exam. Good.

By the way, both Chuck Norris review activities get converted to maybe one or two bonus points each.


(Image: Donald Driver gets behind the Ravens secondary for a TD, Green Bay Packers crush Baltimore. Sweet.)

Homework is ready, and I am working on clicker points.

Your homework 16 is ready to roll. I am working on clicker points right now.

GO for launch with Homework 15!

Homework 15 is now GO for launch. Dude tomorrow at 2 PM, as usual, so get hustling.

Doubles

Some of you had more than one answer on your scantron, as indicated on the printouts you received today.

After class, I double checked the scantrons of several students, and many of them picked up one or two points. There was a smudge on an incorrect answer, poorly erased, and a true dot on the correct answer.

Interestingly: a few students did not get any points, and in each case, they erased the correct answer, and they bubbled in an incorrect answer! So as they say, if you change your answer on a multiple choice test, make for dang sure that you have a good reason to change it!

Doc cam

The two doc cam files from yesterday are now up in Webcourses.

HW pointage

We have enough homework "on the books" now, so it is time to activate the HW pointage row of your My Grades page. This will show you how many of the 21 points from homework you currently have -- if I were to calculate semester grades today.

Remember, according to the syllabus, HW scores are converted to 21 points on your semester grade. We have MANY homework questions on the books, and this row of your My Grades page boils it down to somewhere between 0 and 21 points.

At the end of the semester I will make the final calculation and round up to the nearest whole number, and THAT will be in the row right below it, "HW points (rounded)."

So add up your two midterms and the HW pointage, then divide by 111. That gives you the percentage right now, for the points on the books so far. Then look up that percentage in the syllabus to figure out your grade if I were to give semester grades today.

Apogee, perigee

The Hubble Space Telescope is on an elliptical orbit:

perigee = 561 kilometers
apogee = 566 kilometers

But that is pretty dang close to a perfect circle. Eccentricity value is close to zero, too: 0.0003457. Nice.

Exam 2 scantrons scores are UP.

I just uploaded your Exam 2 scantron scores. Look on your My Grades page in Webcourses.

Still a few points to add into the Exam 2 total: code question #46. I will grade up the code question, #46, this weekend.

Big nice homework is running.

Your big nice weekend assignment is now up, Homework 14.

It requires that you dip forward into chapter 12, so do some skimming and eyeballing in chapter 12 before hitting this homework hard.

Monday:

1. demonstration of atmospheric pressure
2. bicycle wheel and lab stool demonstration
3. Bernoulli's Principle.
4. How to heat up water.

I love the Bernoulli Principle.

PDFs for clicker sessions A15 and A16

The PDFs of clicker sessions A15 and A16 are now up for you to review. Look in the Ratatouille folder in the Webcourses home page.

Code, lovely codes

Being a teacher, so it is my delight to view you guys thinking and to see you put your thoughts into words. I love it!

That is why it is delightful to me to work out the code question data from yesterday's 2 PM lecture. I just uploaded the data into your My Grades page in Webcourses, and it requires some explication.

1. A15 answered: basic score that goes into your semester grade. If you clicked in a response, you got this.
2. A15 correct: goes into potential bonus points at end of semester, as explained in syllabus.
3. A15.1 decode: this is the transformation of your compact code answer to question 1, into clear English. I reviewed this to determine if you answered A15.1 correctly.
4. ..A15.1 correct: If your decode was righteous, you got 1 point here.
5. Similarly for A15.2 and A15.3
6. The sum of ..A15.1 correct + ..A15.2 correct + ..A15.3 correct = item 2 on this list A15 correct.

(I usually use .. in Webcourses as a prefix for a subset of an exam score or some other score.)

So the subset of specific decodes and correct subscores tells you all about your performance. This is normal.

But the thing that just knocks me out is reading through your decodes. Some of the answers were unexpected but true, right on the mark. That is why this method is like a million bucks. Or, put it another way: Think of all the ways UCF forces you to regurgitate what your profs say in lecture -- part of the system. But these code questions have enough freedom and breadth that you the student can really be creative. Boy, howdy!

H-alpha

From Astronomy Picture of the Day: Our star, in H-α, 656 nanometers -- incredible. This is why astronomers so love H-α.



Click image for full size view.

16FYDLMRYD

I will be turning in today's scantrons for scoring soon.

I took a peek at the code answers, and there were some interesting true statements, like

Chuck Norris knows the football vertical velocity vector is equal to the robot vertical velocity vector.

which was "16FYDLMRYD" in the data file.

See you tomorrow (Thursday) for lecture, 2 PM. No homework tonight.

Homeworks to do

There are now two homework assignments to work on tonight:

12. HW 12, a regular homework assignment over today's material.
13. Review HW 13, a mini-review to prep for tomorrow's exam.

Also, I just uploaded the first official clicker data, "A14 answered" and "A14 correct" based on today's gigantic clicker session.

In addition, there is a PDF of the sessions today and yesterday. Look for the Ratatouille icon on the home page.

HW 11 is GO for launch!

You can get started in on homework #11 now. A few semi-brain burners and one read-ahead question on topics from chapter 11 -- which we will begin to morrow.

Homework is ready!

Your tenth homework assignment is now GO for launch. Tables, tables and more tables. Relate the tables to our work on doc cam yesterday.

ALSO: read through to the end of chapter 7 if you want to click the matching question correctly.

Post questions in Discussions if you get stuck.

Clicker data are up.

For everyone who has registered at http://student.turningtechnologies.com/, there are A12 clicker data up in Webcourses.

1. "A12 answered" tells how many questions you answered in class.
2. "A12 correct" tells you how many questions you answered correctly today.
3. "A12 bonus point" is the bonus point you get today for being registered and ready to click.

When clicker points officially start on Tuesday, the "Axx answered" figures into your regular semester grade, and the "Axx correct" factors up for possible 4 point bonus at semester's end. Both of these concepts are spelled out in the syllabus. I have set up these two rows up now so that you can see how it works, but our first "for real" clicker points start with A14, next Tuesday.

For now, it is just one bonus point per class meeting, if registered.

Side note: do not stress out if you see the clicker rows disappear, re-appear and disappear a few times over the weekend. It just means I am messing around in the gradebook, trying to figure out the best way to upload your data.

29 out of 60 registered

I just updated "Your Device ID" and the total is now 29. That is half the class.

The rest of you: No more slacking! Get on over to the Turning Technologies website and register, asap. Instructions are four posts below this one.

Exam 1 blurb sheet is now up.

You can look at the blurbs for each question you got wrong on the exam. Look for the googly eyes icon on the Webcourses home page.

Exam 1 scantron scores are now UP.

You can now see your Exam 1 scantron score in your My Grades page of Webcourses. Exam 1 was all scantron, so there is no "..Exam 1 SMA" score for Exam 1. Exam 2, however, will have clicker SMA questions, now that we are getting the hang of ResponseCard XR.

Also, I uploaded another bunch of devices for those of you who registered your clickers this afternoon.

If your device ID is blank, make sure to register your clicker asap.

7

I now have 7 students' ResponseCards registered: Madeleine, Rebecca, Firelei, Shawna, Brittany, Jason and Keith. Good work.

The rest of youse: get your you-know-whats in there and register, asap.

How to get your ResponseCard XR registered

How to get your ResponseCard XR registered:

1. Go to the website http://student.turningtechnologies.com


2. Enter your ResponseCard XR's Device ID (found on back of unit).


3. Enter your first name and last name in the appropriate fields.


4. In "Other Field" type in your NID.


5. Complete security entry (code letters and numbers).


6. Press Next


7. Enter the instructor email address: dr_b_777@yahoo.com


8. Select PSC1121-A001 and add it to the list on the right.


9. Click Next and confirm information. You may click Back if you find information you need to correct.

Get this squared away for lecture tomorrow. There is not much you can do online, other than register your clicker this way.

However, I created a new row in your My Grades page in Webcourses, "Device ID." I will be updating the clicker roster from from the TurningTechnologies.com website early and bright tomorrow morning and every hour or two until lecture tomorrow. So check that part of your My Grades page to verify that you are registered.

Be ready. Firelei and Rebecca, check course mail.

Everybody: Be on the alert tonight for an assignment concerning your clicker and how to register it etc.

Firelei and Rebecca: Check course mail in Webcourses!

HW 8 revised schedule

OK, students, go take another run at Homework 8. I revised the schedule, so that it is due at 2 PM tomorrow (Wednesday).

Also, I clicked it up one notch, so that everyone can take a fifth attempt.

GO GO GO!