Section 0004 blurbs up, too.

I just created the last few blurb sheets for the section 0004 students. Look in the WIlliam Hung folder.

Midterm blurb sheets are now up for Sec 0003

You guys in tomorrow's final, T/Th section 0003, you now have blurb sheets (in PDF) for midterm exams 1, 2 3 and 4. These PDFs, with your exam printouts, will help you study for the final exam.

Look in the William Hung folder.

Blurb about the final exam, all sections

There is a short blurb PDF about the final exam for both sections: time, size, format, what to bring, topics. It is linked in the home page.

Chuck Norris SMA key

The answer key to the in-class Chuck Norris mega-combo SMA review is up in Webcourses. Check the CPS study guides folder. It is the same PDF for both sections.

Chuck Norris Mega-Combo Review HW

The Chuck Norris Mega-Combo Review Homework is available now. It will be converted down to one or two bonus points for the bonus points row of your My Grades page →IF you do well on it.

Study comment:

Bruce Lee, the only human who ever beat on Chuck Norris, used to say, "Be like water." He meant that as his secret for martial arts power, the martial arts style that is no style.

Now... Just think of all the different things we have learned about water this semester. I wonder if I could teach a PSC1121 course using only H₂O, or a final exam that had nothing but questions referring to or about water.

Exam blurbs, exam printouts

If you have not gotten your exam printouts yet, there is not a lot of time to do so. Monday office hours is basically IT.

However, you can still use the blurb sheets in the William Hung folder, even if you do not have your printout. The blurb for at least form A is now up for each section, each exam. I hope to have the others ready first thing on Monday morning. But even form A is useful as a sort of study guide, because it lists the basic concepts of each question on the exam, other than the matching.

So that makes it a mini-study guide to help you get ready for the final exam. Nice.

Aristotle and Mendeleev

Study question:

Aristotle had a list of four elements. Mendeléev's table, now carrying over 100 elements, is not just a list but a periodic table. What is the physical basis for the periodicity in the table of the elements invented by Mendeléev?

Summary analytical test

All sections:

Before the final exam, go take the "Summary analytical test, semester end" in the separate GEP PSC1121 10Spring area of Webcourses. It wraps up our departmental analysis for the semester.

SSG are open for all

The SSGs are now open for anyone to join. Look over the schedule. There are Saturday, Sunday and Monday sessions.

GO GO GO!

All class CPS data is UP.

I rounded up the CPS pointage. This is the CPS portion of your semester grade.

Also: the "CPS correct bonus" value is now set. There were 80 questions in CPS, so if you answered 60 or more correctly, you now have the 4 bonus points. Nice.

We will use the CPS in class on Monday for the Chuck Norris mega-review, and both sections will use the CPS on the final exam.

Ultraviolet and magnetic fields. Sweeeeeet.

Go join an SSG for Saturday, Sunday or Monday.

If you are in Group 1, you can see this blue SSG icon in the Webcourses home page. Go in and see if there is an SSG group that you would like to join to prepare for the final exam.

Then CLICK to join!

HW 21 ready now.

WHEEWWWWWW!!!

Finally, HW 21 is ready, for all sections. Make sure to read in chapter 23, especially the section about "Radiating Objects," pp. 482-484, before you launch into this assignment.

For all sections, this asignment is due on Monday night, 11:59 PM.

HW 21 postponed til tomorrow, lunchtime

I am still not satisfied with Homework 21, so I am postponing it for both sections, until tomorrow (Thursday) noon. It will be due next Monday.

Keep alert for announcements.

S.A.R.C. study techniques handouts

If you have trouble during exam week with

• getting extremely nervous during the exam
• keeping organized and on schedule
• concentrating on studies
• etc.

you will like the study skills PDF handouts that Student Academic Resource Center (SARC) has, free for the having. There are like 93 different handouts on study and reading techniques, test-taking methods, procrastination avoidolation etc. For example, the POWER STUDYING handout.

Nice.

Exam blurbs

I just posted the blurbs for the MWF section 0004's midterm exam 4, forms A, B and C.

I still have a bunch of blurbs to post for several exams, both sections, and that is my task for today, along with designing homework 21.

Final Exam S.I. review

Here are the specs for Gloria Scott's S.I. review for the final exam:

Sunday, April 25
noon to 2:00 PM
Student Union room 316ABCD

Exam 4 scores up

Section 0003, your scantron and SMA scores are now UP.

Looks like a ton of the scantrons did not get graded -- so those will show up as zero. We will have to sort through the exams and scantrons tomorrow. What a mes.

CPS and homework pointage

You can now get a fairly good idea on your semester grade going into the final exam, other than the fact that we have some homework and CPS still to do.

What you do:

1. Look at "HW pointage" in My Grades, and round it up to the nearest whole number; maximum = 16.
2. Look at "CPS pointage" on your My Grades page, and round it up, too, to the nearest whole number; maximum = 24.
3. Check "Best three midterms" in My Grades.
4. Add up (a), (b) and (c).
5. Divide that sum by 160. That percentage gives you an idea of what your semester grade would be IF I gave semester grades today, not in May.
6. Look up that percentage on the semester grade scale.

A	90% or higher
B	75% or higher
C	60% or higher
D	50% or higher
F	lower than 50%

No homework

OOOPS! I was working on exam grades most of the day and completely forgot to set up a homework assignment. No homework til next week. Have a nice weekend!

SMA points are UP, sec. 0004

Sec. 0004 students, your SMA points are now UP. They are in the "..Exam 4 SMA" row of your My Grades page. You can now add them up mentally, "..Exam 4 SMA" + "..Exam 4 scantron" for your Exam 4 total. As soon as I get the scores for sec. 0003 in, I will active the main "Exam 4" row to add the two subscores as usual.

I also installed some new rows way below there, to post the actual data you sent on each of the three SMA questions. This way you can double check your error against the solution in the CPS folder. Another row indicates whether you got some partial credit on #1. Those partial credit points are already included in the "..Exam 4 SMA" row, so do not ask about adding them in again.

Interesting codes, section 0004

I just spent 30 minutes reading and analyzing your codes for SMA question #1. Very interesting. I decided to make it a 2 point question, and I am giving partial credit for some of the unconventional codes.

Effectively, this means SMA #1 is 1 regular point and one bonus point.

As a result dozen students nabbed 4 points on SMA, 2 regular and 2 bonus. I josh you guys about brain burners, but when I can see what you are thinking and award extra points, it gives me great joy.

No news on Exam 4 from Thursday.

No news yet from the test scoring service on the scantron scores for section 0003. It just goes to show you. Sometimes they come back rapidly, as happened with the MWF section 0004 scantrons. Other times, you can take a quick 5 day road trip to Montreal before the scantrons come back.



So we wait.

Convection in the surface of our star.

In Astronomy Picture of the Day for April 16: Convection cells in the surface of our star.

Up close, the solar surface is a striking patch work of granules in this very high resolution picture of the quiet Sun. Caused by convection, the granules are hot, rising columns of plasma edged by dark lanes of cooler, descending plasma. But the high-resolution view reveals that the dark lanes are dotted with many small, contrasting bright points. Constantly present on the solar surface, the bright points do not seem to be related to sunspots that come and go with the magnetic solar cycle. Nonetheless, the bright points are regions of concentrated magnetic fields and are bright because the magnetic pressure opens a window to hotter deeper layers below the photosphere. For scale, the white bar at the lower left corresponds to 5,000 kilometers across the Sun's surface. The sharp, narrow-band image was recorded in September, 2007 using the Swedish Solar Telescope on the astronomical island of La Palma.

For comparison, 5000 kilometers in solar diagram vs. 4100 km from Orlando to Seattle:

Nice.

Gradebook columns, rows in My Grade page

I am working with CPS, homework and Exam 4 SMA data in my Webcourses gradebook. So some of the rows in your My Grades might look discombobulated for a few days. Anyway, don't panic. By Monday latest, I hope to have all points in your My Grades page.

The SMA key is UP

Your SMA study guide is now UP in Webcourses. Check the CPS study guides folder.

Gloria's R.I. review handout

Gloria's handout from this afternoon's S.I. review is now UP, in PDF form. It is in the S.I. folder.

Today's SMA data are up

Section 0004, I just uploaded your SMA scores from today's review. Also, I included your actual answers for #9 and #10, for future reference and so that you can double check.

I warded two points on #10 if you got it correct, and 1 point if you got the scientific notation messed up. So the "L36-C25 SMA answered" is 10, but the "L36-C25 SMA correct" is 11. For those of you shooting for the 75% correct CPS bonus (cf. syllabus), that extra point will help a teeny bit. :)

Section 0003, you have zeroes in your "L36-C25 SMA answered" and "L36-C25 SMA correct" rows until tomorrow!

Extremely cool pressure suit and deliberately jumping out of a perfectly good airplane.

Sweet gear.

Skydiving is dangerous -- but not nearly as dangerous as skydiving from a plane in outer space.

That can kill you. The temperature can freeze your body, and the lack of air pressure can boil your blood.

Nonetheless, an Austrian daredevil named Felix Baumgartner plans to take the 23-mile plunge from the edge of space. And in the process, he hopes to become the first parachutist to break the sound barrier, plummeting toward the ground at 760 miles per hour.

(By John R. Quain - FOXNews.com)

SMA tomorrow

Section 0004, we will have an SMA review set in lecture tomorrow, last 20 minutes or so. Make sure to bring your CPS.

Homework 17 last chance special

I re-opened HW 17 for a last chance attempt, if you want to go through it one more time. It now allows up to 5 attempts, so go take one last run through it, study with it, discuss it with your classmates. The last chance special expires at 11:59 PM, Tuesday night.

Gloria's S.I. review next Monday

Monday, April 12th
4:30-6:00 pm
HPA 112

SSG signups are now open for Group 1.

Group 1 can now sign up for SSG. If you can see the blue SSG icon in the Webcourses home page, you will be able to sign up.

At 10 PM, Sunday night, it will open up for everybody.

CPS study guides are up

I just finished activating CPS study guides in Webcourses. Also Wednesday, Thursday and Friday scores are in your My Grades page. Good.

Homework 19 is GO for launch

Go take a few shots on Homework 19, which is a big one, 19 lovely questions, including a few brain burners to test your visual interpretation skills.

Due dates for HW 19 are usual, Monday morning for section 0004 and Tuesday morning for section 0003. Post questions in discussions if you get bamboozled, hornswoggled or confounded. The two TAs Zach and Star are on duty, and I will also be scanning discussions for opportunities to learn.

CPS data and the Large Hadron Collider

I was working with a student in office hours this morning, trying to get C21 data squared away for you guys in section 0003. Nearly as simple as running the Large Hadron Collider over there in Geneva, Switzerland.

Also, I have a few sessions this week to post, both sections.

Why you can, must and shall become physics dominators in 2010.

This highly technical YouTube shows why each PSC1121 student must strive to crush Exam 4 and become a physics dominator at the Chuck Norris level.

New CPS subtotals UP.

Your My Grades page in Webcourses now has "CPS answered subtotal" and "CPS correct subtotal" lines, below the blue part. With the "answered" data you can get a handle on your CPS pointage for the semester, out of 24, by the conversion method on the syllabus. Also, you can check the CPS bonus for correctly getting 75% correct.

Right now, the baseline for CPS is 58 points, but that will increase each time we do more CPS.

By the way, I set up a "HW subtotal" too, below the blue part.

More CPS up.

I just uploaded a bunch of CPS data:

1. Friday (L32) and Monday (L33) CPS data for section 0004
2. most of today's data (C23) for section 0003.

There is still some more C23 data to merge with Wednesday's CPS for section 0004.

Hair on end

Tomorrow and Thursday, we will demonstrate the concept of voltage with the van de Graaff generator, so famous for making your hair stand on end. If you want to try it out, make sure to wash your hair but no styling gel or other goop. My hair is too curly (a sign of geniusness), but even for straight hair, you never know whose hair will do the best.

This photo of Ashlea from a few semesters ago, is one of my favorites.

Homework 18 will open up at 5:50 PM for T/Th section

Section 0003, your next homework, HW 18, will light up tonight at 5:30 PM tonight, and don't forget to hit HW 17, which is open for a little while longer!

HW pointage will be converted to 16 points on semester grade.

I just activated the summary row for homework performance. The "HW pointage" row in your My Grades page will convert to 16 points on semester grade. See your syllabus.

Right now we have 189 points on the books, homework-wise, but that will get bigger before the semester ends.

Note: I will also be doing the same thing for CPS pointage, but I have some catching up and cleaning up with CPS data before I activate the "CPS pointage" row.

Visual podcasts are up to date.

I just finished updating the iTunes U area for both sections, all the way up to today's lecture.

Also, the PDF do-over of the discombobulated Exercise 22 is in the doc cam folder for you guys in Section 0004. Look for the "yeah, right" guy from the Chuck Norris Mountain Dew commercial.

HW 17 is running.

Homework 17 on waves is now available for your studying pleasure.

Here are the due dates:

3. T/Th section 0003, due tomorrow (Tuesday) afternoon, 6 PM.
4. MWF section 0004, normal time, 9:30 AM, Wednesday.

What a great launch for STS-131

What a great liftoff for orbiter Discovery.

It was interesting that about the time the solid rocket engines cut out, maybe a little later, there was a deep rumble outside my apartment in Casselberry: the sound of the engines during launch finally reached here from Kennedy 39A. Excellent.

GO for Homework 16

You are now GO for launch with Homework 16.

I will set up Homework 17 on Monday, after a bit more instruction for section 0004.

So just HW 16 for this weekend. Yay.

Brain burner alert

You are going to see some lovely brain burners in HW 16 and HW 17 at lunchtime or so. SWEEEEEEEEET!