July 25, 2006

At the sciencepointers.com web site you can freely download and distribute the reading guides I wrote for Giancoli’s Physics text and for Huggins’ Physics 2000 text. I strongly suggest that you edit the reading guides to suite your class purposes. The sciencepointers.com also has links to web resources that I use in my physics, computer science and mathematics classes.

I teach introductory physics at Midland Lutheran College (MLC), Fremont, Nebraska. MLC dropped the physics major in the early 1970’s due to low enrollment. The introductory course is primarily populated by pre-health students. I started teaching at MLC in 1983. I used the trigonometry-based textbook by Giancoli from 2000-2005. I used the calculus-based textbook by Huggins, Physics 2000, for 2005-2006. I will use the Physics 2000 book again for 2006-2007. As I started planning for Fall 2005 I almost elected to teach the courses without requiring a textbook for students. Then I discovered the Physics 2000 text and adopted it. Students pay about $30 at our bookstore for the two volumes and CD. This covers the physics textbook requirement for two semesters.

When I started teaching at MLC, the two-semester physics course was calculus-based for all students. In the early 1990’s I changed the format of the course as follows. A second two-semester introductory physics sequence was added to the college catalog. PHY151 (4 credit hours) and PHY152 (4 credit hours) make up the two-semester trigonometry-based physics sequence. PHY161 (5 credit hours) and PHY162 (5 credit hours) make up the two-semester calculus-based physics sequence. Students in PHY151 and PHY152 are primarily pre-health (medicine, dentistry, PT, OT, optometry, etc.). Students in PHY161 and 162 are usually pre-engineering or chemistry majors. The PHY151 course generally has about 20 students and the PHY161 course has about 5 students.

PHY151 and PHY161 meet at the same time three days a week in the fall semester and have the same laboratory experience. The same is true for PHY152 and PHY162 in the spring semester. The PHY161 and PHY162 students have one extra lecture/discussion meeting once a week for 50 minutes each semester. The applications of calculus to physics are covered at this extra meeting.

When I used the Giancoli textbook I loaned a calculus-based textbook to each PHY161 and PHY162 student. With the Huggins textbook I told the PHY151 and PHY152 students which sections they could skip. To assess their understanding of calculus applications to physics, the PHY161 and PHY162 students have slightly different homework assignments and test questions than the PHY151 and PHY152 students. All students turn in homework and take tests on the same schedule.

I expect students to read the text and reading guide pages before the lecture. I give a pop quiz at the beginning of class about once a week. Students are held responsible on these quizzes for the items marked with * in the reading guide. The quiz points are worth about 3% of the course grade. I would estimate about half of the students prepare for class.

Some reading guides (especially the Huggins reading guides) have bonus points embedded in the reading guide. The first student to send me an e-mail with the correct answer earns the bonus point. Some of these bonus points are connected to what I consider to be errors in the text.

For the most part, I use meters, kilograms, etc. in the reading guides. For the most part, Physics 2000 does not use meters, kilograms, etc. I did not find this troublesome enough to prevent me adopting the text for the class.

My order of topics is similar to the Giancoli order. I have posted my syllabi and class schedules for both the Giancoli and Huggins version of the courses. I generated reading material for nuclear physics as the Physics 2000 text does not cover this in enough depth for my course needs. I skipped several of the sections in the Physics 2000 text.

I think one can use Physics 2000 for a trigonometry-based physics class. The calculus level sections of the text can be identified with the 161 or 162 labels in the reading guides I have created.

The Physics 2000 text does not have end of chapter problems. For the Physics 2000 course I assigned a few of the exercises in the chapters for homework, but most of the homework assignments consisted of problems I wrote.

I welcome your feedback on these reading guides.

Greg Clements clements@mlc.edu