Getting Started#
PHY 321 is a course that has been organized to encourage your deep learning of classical mechanics, to provide you with opportunities for growth and agency, to initiate a process of lifelong self-education, and to enculturate you into the practices of physics. Because of this, it might seem there’s a lot for you to do. So this document will help you get started with the course.
Before the first class and into the first week#
Read the administrative documents on the course website or linked in D2L. Most importantly:
make sure you can log into D2L and that you can find the course page,
read about your teachers and the grading policy,
review the textbook information and make sure you have access to the books,
look over the schedule and let Danny (caball14@msu.edu) know if you have any conflicts.
consider your views of using generative AI in your classes, do some research, and be prepared to discuss your thoughts in class. We will generate a class policy together.
complete the pre-class survey by the end of the first week of classes.
Preparing for class each week#
Classical Mechanics is a challenging course, but it is also a subject that is well-established with many examples, resources, and tools. For each class week, we will prepare a set of notes, links, and videos. They will be organized by the week and will be available on the course website, and linked in D2L.
The idea is to provide you with multiple forms of resources and for you to find the ones that work best for you. You should not feel compelled to read, watch, or listen to everything, but you should feel compelled to do something. This might mean reading the textbook, watching a video, working through a problem, or discussing the material with a classmate. The goal is to engage with the material in a way that helps you learn and grow.
We will have weekly pre-class surveys that will ask you to reflect on the material and your learning. These surveys will be due before Monday’s classes. These are both meant to help you reflect on your learning and to help us understand how to best support you. These surveys will be graded for completion only and factor into your reflection grade.
Important
There is far too much material for you to review and read in a given week.
We expect you to spend at least 30 minutes per class hour reviewing materials that help you.
We will provide suggested pathways through the material each week.
Look at Week 1 for an example of what to expect.
A typical class week#
Each class week will have a similar structure:
Monday and Wednesday will be lecture days. We will have a mix of lecture, clicker questions, and small group work. These class periods will be recorded and made available on D2L.
Tip
These classes will follow the digital notes posted each week, so you can follow along, ask questions, and take notes as you see fit. There are handwritten notes available for each class posted as well, but those are less accessible to folks.
While the examples are worked in the notes, and the information is explained there, the lectures will provide space for us to discuss and work through the material together to deepen your understanding and grow your physics, computing, and mathematical skills.
We strongly encourage you to attend class.
iClickers
We will use iClickers in class to help us gauge your understanding of the material and to help you engage with the material.
How to setup iClickers.
Friday’s class is a workshop day. We will work through homework problems together, discuss the material, and work on computational problems. These classes will not be recorded, but we will post the notes and problems on the course website.
Tip
These classes will be more interactive and will provide you with opportunities to work through problems and ask questions in a smaller group setting.
We strongly encourage you to attend this class in person. Most students have found this part of the class to be the most helpful for their learning, and we get to learn more about you, which is important for us as instructors.
Homework Assignments#
Our view of homework is that they should be helpful in deepening your learning and that you should be encouraged to work collaboratively on them. These exercises are often challenging, and it’s typical that a single student might not be able to solve them on their own – indeed, the time to solve and write solutions for them is often too long for a single student to complete.
You may work collaboratively on homework assignments, but you must turn in solutions that are your collective work. This means that you should be able to explain the solutions to your peers and that you should be able to reproduce the solutions on your own. Each person must turn in their own assignment, but that assignment can be the same as up to two of your peers.
Caution
You and your classmates must write up your own solutions. Each of you is responsible for keeping a copy of the solutions you turn in.
You must list the names of the people you worked with on the assignment. If you worked alone, you must write “I worked alone” on the assignment.
You must be able to explain the solutions to your peers. Do not copy solutions to problems or parts of problems with questioning every part, that is antithetical to the learning goals of the course.
Homework Submission
You will submit your homework assignments on Gradescope.
Homework Reflections#
In addition to the homework assignments, you will be asked to write a reflection on your learning for each homework assignment. These reflections are meant to help you think about your learning, to help us understand how to best support you, and to help you grow as a learner. They are also helping us to ensure that you and your classmates are working productively on homework assignments.
These reflections will be graded for completion only and factor into your reflection grade.
Midterm and Final Projects#
There are no exams in this course, instead, we will have two midterms and a final project. The midterms will be take-home exams that are similar to the homework assignments, but they will cover a broader range of material.
Midterms#
The same rules apply to midterms with respect to collaboration; you are welcome to work with your classmates, and the teaching staff to complete the exams.
Important
The take-home midterms will be open for almost two weeks; you can often start some exercises early as they cover older material.
They are meant to be challenging, but we will provide you with the resources and support you need to complete them.
There is no homework due during the period in which the midterm is assigned.
In contrast to homework assignments, you must turn in your own solutions to the midterms.
Final Project#
The final project will be a computational project that will be due during the final exam period.
The project will be a chance for you to explore a topic of interest to you, to deepen your understanding of the material, and to grow your physics and computational skills. Here, we are hoping you synthesize the various concepts and methods we have developed to investigate a physical problem of your interest.
We will provide you with a list of projects to choose from, but you are welcome to propose your own project. We will provide a few examples of such projects later in the semester.