8.01 :: Physics I

> Home > Staff > General Info > Calendar > Lecture/Topic Listing > Tutoring > Problem Sets > Exams > Walter's Corner > Previous Years > Feedback > Grades		General Information Message from Prof. Alan Guth: 8.01 is the mid-level first-year physics course, aimed at the majority of MIT students. It is paced faster than 8.01L, it is less rigorous that 8.012, and it does not have the emphasis on take-home experiments that characterizes 8.01X. Our goal is to convey the excitement of the physicist's quest to understand nature at its deepest level, and at the same time to provide the knowledge and tools that you will need to continue your studies in science or engineering. We hope you will enjoy the course.

Lectures
Lecture/Recitations L01-L04 will be given by Profs. Walter Lewin and Min Chen on Mondays, Tuesday, and Wednesdays. These sessions will serve as combined lectures and recitations.

All students are required to attend one of these lecture/recitation classes three times a week and take the weekly exams on Friday. These classes will give you an opportunity to ask questions about the material, and to practice the art of problem solving. Attendance will be noted and it will form part of your final grade. In addition, if your final grade in the course falls slightly below the borderline of a grade cut, your lecture/recitation instructor will have the opportunity, in consultation with the course administrator, Prof. Alan Guth, to raise your grade on the basis of your participation in class.

If you'd like to change your lecture/recitation section, click here. Then use the link for changing a recitation section (the database lists the 8.01 lecture/recitations as recitation sections). You can also inform us of your lecture/recitation choice by listing it on your first quiz.

Tutoring and Instructors’ Office Hours
On Thursdays, the graduate teaching assistants will hold tutorial sessions to help students prepare for the quiz on the following Friday. You are strongly encouraged to seek their help. Tutoring sessions last 25 minutes, from 5 minutes after the hour until 30 minutes after the hour, and from this time until 5 minutes before the next hour. Initially they will be on a drop-in basis, but we may switch to a sign-up system if there is a problem with overcrowded sessions. Tutoring hours are 3:00-5:00 pm and 6:00-8:00 pm, in both Rooms 26-310 and 26-210.

You can earn up to 3 percentage points of extra credit on your final grade by attending tutoring, where the maximum 3% credit is obtained by attending two sessions each week. Since students who are doing very well may not need these tutorial sessions, after each quiz Prof. Guth will announce a tutoring cutoff grade, where students with grades on the quiz above the cutoff will automatically be given credit for attending two tutoring sessions during the following week.

Profs. Lewin, Chen, and Guth will all have office hours each week, and you are all welcome to attend the office hours of any instructor in the course. Note that Prof. Guth welcomes students who want to talk about physics, as well as administrative issues. The tutoring is intended to focus on quiz preparation, so the instructor office hours will be the main tool for obtaining help on the problem sets. The instructors' office hours are available on the Staff page.

8.01 Textbook
University Physics, 11th Edition, Vol. 1, 2003
by Young and Freedman

The textbook is available at the Coop, and is required. It provides detailed derivations and explanations and has many worked examples and problems. At the end of the term you will also need a separate chapter on special relativity (Chapter 37). If the Coop does not have these now, we will make sure that they are available before they are needed.

8.01 Study Guide
Essentials of Introductory Classical Mechanics, 6th Edition
by Wit Busza, Susan Cartwright, and Alan H. Guth

The Study Guide is available from the Coop, and is also required. It provides a concise discussion of the relevant principles of physics, and includes a large collection of physics problems, some with full solutions and some without.

If you discover any errors in the Study Guide, please send them by email to Alan Guth, (guth@ctp.mit.edu). No error is too small to be worth correcting. The authors are not accepting royalties for this book, so the price that you paid was only the cost of production.

Problem Sets
Problem sets will be assigned about once a week. Most of the problems will come from the textbook by Young and Freedman, or from the Study Guide by Busza, Cartwright, and Guth. The problem sets will be available on the course website by Friday or Saturday of each week. They will be due in Room 4-339B, by 3:00 pm Thursday of each week. Solutions will be posted immediately after 3:00 pm, so that you will be able to use them in studying for the quiz. The schedule of problem set due dates is included on the Course Calendar. The problem sets will be graded. The graders will read your answers to one or two questions on each problem set, and they will check whether the other problems have at least been handed in.

We believe that working out the problems on the homework is absolutely essential to learning the material of this course. We strongly encourage students to get together in groups to discuss the homework, but of course the mere copying of solutions written by your friends will not help you learn physics.

On the first page of each homework set and on each quiz, it is important that you print your name and the number of your recitation/lecture.

Mastering Physics
Mastering Physics problem sets will also be part of the course, and will be due on Tuesdays at 4:30 pm. More information about Mastering Physics will follow shortly.

Quizzes
Quizzes are given every Friday, each for 50 minutes, at 10:05 am in Room 4-270. Note that this is the time period that the registrar has set aside as a "laboratory." Unless otherwise announced, each quiz will include one problem that is a slight modification of a previously assigned homework problem, and the scope of each quiz will include all the material since the previous quiz. Please be aware, however, that physics is a very cumulative subject, so you will find it valuable to periodically review all that you have learned from the beginning of the course. You may not use notes, calculators, or cell phones during the quiz. Each quiz will contain a sheet of formulas for your use, which will be posted in advance to help guide your studying.

Final Examination
There will be an examination during the Final Examination period, but since the weekly testing during the term will be quite extensive, this last exam will not be a traditional final exam. Instead, one third of the exam will substitute for the weekly quiz on the last week's material, and it will contribute to your grade exactly as if it were the 13th weekly quiz. The remaining 2/3 of the test will be used as a "make-up" exam, which will offer you the opportunity to prove that you learned more than was demonstrated by the weekly quizzes. The details will be announced later, but this part of the exam will be optional, and will only have the possibility of raising, and not lowering, your final grade. This exam will be held on Tuesday, May 17, 1:30 pm - 4:30 pm, in Johnson Athletics Center.

Academic Behavior and Honesty
During quizzes and the final examination, the exchange of information with others is unacceptable. So is the use of notes or other materials, besides the formula sheet that will be provided. You will not be allowed to use calculators (they will not be needed). Anyone suspected of violating these guidelines will be charged with academic dishonesty and subject to MIT’s disciplinary procedures. However, you are strongly encouraged to get together in groups outside of class to discuss the problem sets and the material presented in the course.

While we encourage you to work with others on homework, we expect that you will write your own independent solutions. However, in this course the copying of others' homework will NOT be treated as academic dishonesty, since the borderline between copying and working together can be fuzzy. But the mere copying of someone else's homework may result in a low grade.

Final Grade Determination
After the average grade for each student is computed numerically using the weighting listed above, Prof. Guth will discuss those students who are just a point or two below the grade borderlines with the lecture/recitation instructors and tutors. On the basis of this discussion, Prof. Guth may use his discretion to push a small number of students above the borderline. The most common reasons for such grade increases are significant participation in lecture/recitation discussions, or significant improvement in performance during the term.

Makeup of Quizzes, Problem Sets, and Mastering Physics
There will be no makeup for missed quizzes, problem sets, or Mastering Physics sessions. However, the lowest of the weekly quizzes, the lowest of the problem sets, and the lowest of the Mastering Physics grades will be dropped. The final exam cannot be dropped. Except for the dropped grades, any missing component which is not excused will be included in the average as a zero.

Excused Absences from Quizzes, Problem Sets, or Mastering Physics
Excused absences for these exercises can be requested from your lecture/recitation instructor. Allowable excuses include religious holidays, conflicts with athletic or other MIT activities, medical problems, or serious personal or family problems. For problem sets and Mastering Physics exercises, excused components will be eliminated in the averaging process.

Since the weekly quizzes count more and are likely to have more variability, we will use a more complicated system to account for excused quizzes. We don't want students to be penalized for being excused from an easy quiz, or to benefit unfairly by being excused from a difficult quiz. Excused quiz grades will therefore be replaced by a "predicted grade," determined by calculating, for each quiz the student took, the number of standard deviations by which the student's grade differed from the class mean. The average number of standard deviations is then applied to the excused quiz to determine the predicted grade.

Questions about Grading
The quizzes and problem sets will be made up by Alan Guth, who will also be supervising the grading. Our goal is to grade as fairly as possible, so please bring any questions about the grading to Prof. Guth at guth@ctp.mit.edu.

8.01 Website
The course web site at http://web.mit.edu/8.01/www/Spring05 will be used to post all announcements, problem sets, problem set solutions, quizzes, and quiz solutions as the term progresses. You are invited to use the anonymous feedback page to relay comments, complaints, or suggestions about the course, or about the website. Messages that you write on the feedback page concerning the course are forwarded anonymously to the lecturer selected. You can also access materials from previous years' courses at http://web.mit.edu/8.01/www/Spring05/prevyrs.html.

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