Homework 4 is ready to roll!

Due to having a late lunch etc., the homework has been on hold til now. But your fourth homework assignment is now available to try out, a mix of some multiple choice conceptual questions, basic ones and brain burners, plus a few calculation-based multiple choice questions and two straight calculations.

Look in the William Hung folder in our Webcourses home page.

GO GO GO!

6R podcast is ready

The lecture for today is now up on iTunes U. I checked the volume levels, all okay.

By the way, homework 4 will be ready a little later than usual: by lunchtime Friday.

Re-constructed last 40 minutes of T5 podcast.

I re-narrated the T5 lecture's last 40 minutes or so:

1. Doc cam, two pages' worth
2. Discussion of Newton's Third Law
3. Normal forces
4. Curved trajectories, starting chapter 4.

The podcast will be available in a few minutes in our iTunes U area. Unlike most podcasts, this reconstructed podcast is a digital video in QuickTime .mov format. Most of our weekly lectures will be in .m4a enhanced audio, which is much more compact.

Anyway, go take a look.

To help you deal with this delay on the full lecture, I will postpone the due date on HW3 til lunchtime on Thursday, so that everyone has a bit of extra leeway.

Using a homework assignment as a study tool

You can use a homework assignment as a study tool. That is, it can help you study through a part of the textbook. Here is why:

1. You usually get 4 attempts at each HW assignment.
2. Webcourses is set to record the highest score from your four attempts.

That being the case, you can make a homework assignment into a study tool in this manner:

1. Quickly take your first attempt, giving your best educated guess for each question, but quickly.
2. Save all your answers and hit the "Finish" button.
3. Hit the grey "View Attempt" button, and make a printout if possible or (if on a Mac) print to a PDF file.
4. View each question and any General Feedback for the question.
5. For each item you got wrong,
   1. find the section of the chapter that mentions that concept or
   2. find the part of the iTunes U visual podcast that goes over that concept
   3. or both!
6. Study in the chapter and then slide back over to Webcourses for a second attempt.
7. After a bit of study, we hope, your HW score will increase, and Webcourses will record the highest of the four scores.

Many students in past semesters have used this study technique, and I commend it to you all again this semester.

Audio check for today's podcast.

I actually listened to the first 10 minutes of today's podcast, and it sounded okay.

But apparently the audio goes silent after the doc cam segment began, 19 minutes or so into the podcast. I am trying to re-render the podcast using QuickTime, and manually rescue the audio. I will upload the corrected version ASAP.

Homework 3 is UP.

Homework 3 is now available.

Gloria's S.I. review for Exam 1 prep.

Here is where the S.I. review session will be next week, leading into Exam 1.

Wednesday, Feb. 2

6:30 - 8:30 PM

CSB101

CPS registration is almost complete.

I just synchronized my CPS roster, and the student count is up to 380. Good work, you guys.

However, that leaves another 100 or so students unregistered. GET TO IT ASAP!!!!!

Subscribe to my lecture calendar.

If you have a calendar application, you might be able to subscribe to my Spring PSC1121 Lectures calendar, published via ical.me.com. It is a .ics file, so it is supposed to light up your calendar application:

1. Mac-OS users: it will work right away.
2. Windows users: as always, it risks Bill Gates' dark side monopoly, so it might be troublous to get it to work.
3. Knights Email (essentially Hotmail) -- don't bother. You can subscribe, but Hotmail does not refresh it. So as I add details to lectures, day by day, week by week, your Knights Email-based subscription remains oblivious. Useless!

Here is the link: Spring PSC1121 Lectures calendar

Subcalendars:
1. Tuesday section 0M01
2. Thursday section 0M02

Homework 2 UP

Homework 2 is up and running in Webcourses. Check the William Hung folder. It is due for all sections on Tuesday next week, 10:30 AM.

Rylee and Amanda office hours

Here are the office hours for Amanda and Rylee this semester:

Rylee
Monday	Noon - 1:30 PM	Room PS158
Friday	3:00 - 4:30 PM	Room PS158

Amanda
Friday	9:00 - 10:00 AM	Room PS158
Friday	11:30 AM - 12:30 PM	Room PS158

Make sure to subscribe to Tuesday AND Thursday podcasts.

I see that 3/4 of both sections has subscribed to the Tuesday podcast, but way fewer have subscribed to the Thursday podcast.

No more slacking!! You all are going to have an obligatory lecture to either attend in person or listen to in iTunes U. GET SUBSCRIBED TO BOTH PODCASTS!

Are you on the CPS roster yet? You can check.

I just uploaded roster data for all sections, a simple Yes if you have successfully registered your CPS device for clicking in lecture. It is in the row of your My Grades page called "Registered for CPS?" down below the blue line.

I will update this row again tonight and maybe tomorrow afternoon.

This row also includes your CPS response pad number. Everyone has a their own response pad number; Gloria Scott is #1, for instance. With the pad number, you'll be able to verify on the CPS screen in class when your answer has been received. It works nicely.

For the rest of you all that are not on the roster yet, get in gear and get registered up as soon as you can. Turn off popup blocking and if you bought the greyish brownish device, drop the leading zero(s) from the serial number when registering. GO! GO! GO!

Today's demonstration

We did a falling five dollar bill demonstration in lecture today, from which we began a discussion of motion, velocity and acceleration.



Thanks, Manny, for being a good sport and helping us out as a volunteer.

Also, the digital video versions are uploaded into iTunes U.

Homework 1 is running.

Homework 1 is running in Webcourses, for all sections. Due on Thursday morning, 10:30 AM. Make sure to view the T3 visual podcast before attempting this homework.

By the way, you will usually have four attempts at each homework assignment in Webcourses. I set the grade book to record the highest score from your attempts.

Visual podcast for today's lecture is UP.

Thursday section, you can now go to iTunes U and view today's T3 visual podcast. The best entryway seems to be the iTunes U link on our home page in Webcourses.

CPS roster up to 166

Roughly 1/3 of class is now in CPS, 166 students. The rest of youse, get your you-know-what in and register for lecture this week!!

Tabs

For those of you having difficulty with tabs in iTunes U -- it might help if you clear your web browser cache. I am trying to sort this out with the campus admin for our iTunes U server.

Get CPS registered for this week's lecture.

Deadline for getting on the CPS roster is

1. Tuesday, Jan. 18 for section 0M01
2. Thursday, Jan. 20 for section 0M02

Make sure to get this done ASAP.

There are several CPS threads in Discussions:General semester questions. Dip through there and prepare yourself for registration. Biggest two tips:

1. Do not use the leading zero(s) in the serial number of the new greyish brown clickers.
2. If you use Safari, turn off popup blocking.

We will have official CPS questions this week.

Homework Zero

For those of you who want to know what homework is like, there is a practice HW, "Homework 0," in Webcourses, with some advanced level Chuck Norris questions. Look in the homework folder on the course home page, which has the icon of another legendary tough guy, Mr. William Hung.

Homework 1 is also in the process of being set up, and it will be released about lunch time on Tuesday. That will be our first official homework for grades.

Supplemental Instruction schedule

Here is the schedule for Supplemental Instruction each week.

Monday

3:30 - 4:20 P.M.

ENG2 105

Tuesday

9:00 - 9:50 AM

HEC102

Wednesday

1:30 - 2:20 PM

HEC119

Thursday

4:30 - 5:20 PM

ENG2 205

Gloria Scott does a superb job of helping you perform at a higher level in class and on exams, which leads to a higher grade for the semester. Give your best shot at making it to S.I., even one session per week will be a whale of a help.

S.I. is just one of the great study tools organized by the Student Academic Resources Center (SARC). One of my favorites is their big web page of study skills handouts. I even use a few of those handouts!!!

Section 0M02 syllabus is UP.

For those of you who need the section 0M02 syllabus, there is a corrected version in Webcourses now. Click the syllabus folder with the day minder icon, on the Webcourses home page. It is a PDF file.

I recommend that everyone get this updated syllabus, with accurate exam schedule.

Helium

Now the helium spectrum. Both sections need to be familiar with this.



Higher definition versions are in iTunes U.

Thursday 0M02 lecture is UP.

The Thursday lecture is now UP in our iTunes U area. Make sure you try viewing this lecture, just for practice.

Next: the helium spectrum into iTunes U and YouTube.

YouTube of hydrogen spectrum

Here are the demonstrations of thermal and hydrogen spectra from Tuesday's lecture. All PSC1121 students, both lecture sections, must view this.



One of the interesting things about this quantum spectrum of hydrogen: it displays almost all the physics concepts we will study this semester. So you can think of this demonstration as the goal of our quest, how to understand the quantum world of hydrogen, the most abundant element in the visible universe.

Knight's mail... oooops

Apparently, the Hotmail origin of UCF Knight's Email service have caused a problem for me. I sent an email to students in section 0M01 on Sunday, all 295 of you. But apparently, that kind of mass email is verboten on Hotmail, so they have blocked my Knight's Email. Nice going, Bill Gates.

Many of you got my email Sunday and sent a question in reply yesterday. However, my account is blocked and I cannot reply.

Just know that I am not ignoring your email!

9

Good work, all you sec. 0M01 students who registered your CPS device through Webcourses. S.I. Leader Gloria Scott got in there as device #1, of course, then another nine:

2. Courtney
3. Michael
4. Charles
5. Matthew
6. Thalia
7. Brooke
8. Morgan
9. Carly
10. Samantha

The link for registering is in the Webcourses home page. You may not register through any other site -- only Webcourses.

Welcome aboard, spring 1121ers!

You all are divided into two sections:

1. Sec. 0M01, whom I see face to face on Tuesdays at 10:30 AM, and
2. Sec. 0M02, whom I see face to face on Thursdays at 10:30 AM.

It is a different structure this semester, in that each section will be viewing one lecture per week through UCF's iTunes U server.

Sec. 0M02 views lecture in iTunes U on Tuesdays

Sec. 0M01 views lecture in iTunes U on Thursdays.

Plus, of course, we will have plenty of homework and lovely examinations, as usual.

See you in class, and welcome aboard!