University of Vermont - Department of Physics last updated: 4/28/2001
Syllabus - Physics 295 "Teaching Physical Science in the Laboratory"
Summer 2001
This course is aimed at teachers, or those preparing to teach, who desire to enliven their teaching of physical science concepts with new demonstrations, new technologies, and an improved understanding of "how things work". The course has been designed to facilitate learning via the Internet ideas that have traditionally been taught in a face-to-face "hands-on" laboratory setting. The course is offered jointly by the University of Vermont's Physics department and the College of Education, and should be appropriate for many continuing education plans towards teacher re-certification.
Course dates: July 9 - August 17 (six weeks). Two new topics will be introduced each week. Each course participant will receive a CD containing video-clips of selected teaching demonstrations used in Introductory Physics courses at UVM, and an apparatus kit useful for doing several basic "at-home" experiments.
Course format: Participants will need to spend 4-6 hours each week, at times of their choosing, performing the assigned "at-home" experiments, completing assigned problems, and recording observations and analyzing data from the experiments, as well as from demonstrations viewed on CD. Participants will also be required to explore "hands-on" computer simulations available via the internet and on the ActivPhysics II CD that can be purchased by mail through the UVM bookstore. Participants are expected to actively participate in both group and individual discussions, not only with the instructor, but also with one another, using a web discussion group format. In addition, the instructor will be available at several mutually agreed upon times each week to help answer participants questions through real-time discussions in a "chat" room format, or by phone. Participants must have available an introductory physics text (College or High-School) to use as a reference. Further elaboration of concepts, experiment directions, assignments and quizzes will be delivered via the Internet using a password-protected course delivery package entitled WebCT.
Registration: To register for the course, or to learn more about it, visit the UVM cybersummer website.
Course Instructors: Tom Warnock, Laboratory Coordinator in the UVM Physics Dept. and Dave Hammond, Laboratory technician in the Physics Dept.
Contact us:
Tom Warnock - phone: (802) 656-0052, or e-mail: jwarnock@zoo.uvm.edu for questions related to the internet course delivery, registration, or specific assignments.
Dave Hammond - phone: (802) 656-0053, or e-mail: dahammon@zoo.uvm.edu for questions specific to the demonstrations on the CD, or about individual project experiments.
Grading: A participant may earn up to 10 points for completion of each of the twelve course topics. These points may be earned in two different ways: 1st - by correctly answering several quiz questions, 2nd - by the instructor's evaluation of how well each participant has communicated the results of their experiments/simulations/assignments to their discussion groups and how valuable their participation was in the discussions relevant to that topic. The final grade for each topic will be determined by assigning a weight of 60% to the better grade (quiz or discussion), and a weight of 40% to the poorer grade on that topic. A participants final course grade will simply be the total of points attained on all the topics that have been completed by the participant.
Course Letter grades will be assigned as follows: 90 - 100+ points = A, 80-89 points = B, 70-79 points = C, 60-69 points = D, below 60 points = Failure.
Required Course Materials:
ActivPhysics 2 Workbook with CD available by mail from the UVM bookstore.
Scientific calculator with trigonometric and exponential functions.
An introductory physics text to be used for reference. (please contact Tom Warnock if you do not own one, or cannot get access to a good one from your local school or library) Some suggested titles are given below, your selection should be based on your previous background in physics and depth of explanation desired. If these are not available, any introductory physics text should suffice.
for those with little or no background in physics, and only high-school algrebra and geometry:
Conceptual Physics, by Paul Hewitt
How Things Work, the Physics of Everyday Life, by Louis Bloomfield
Physics, by Douglas Giancoli
for those who have taken an introductory physics course, either in high-school or college:
Physics, by Paul Tipler (complete - Vols. I & II )
College Physics, Serway & Faughn
Fundamentals of Physics, Halliday & Resnick
for those who have a more extensive background in physics:
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (Vols. I & II ), by Richard Feynman
The Berkeley Physics Course (Vol. I) by Kittel, Knight, and Ruderman, (Vol. II) by Purcell, (Vol. III ) by Crawford.
Students will be expected to comply with the University's Academic Honesty policy. Please consult UVM's The Cat's Tale or the Schedule of Classes paper for details. Cooperation with classmates is encouraged , but any completed assignments or quizzes must be your own individual work. When taking quizzes, you may use your ActivPhysics Workbook, and any notes, but not the ActivPhysics CD, your text, or other reference materials.