Contents

Important links

The First Year Office (LG03 in Old Main Building).     See the Administrative arrangements     Quizzes and on-line tutorials via Web Assign.     Instructions on logging on to Web Assign.     The UNSW Blackboard site.   The course Bulletin Board.

To do this week

Learning resources

Lecture material
• Lectures at these times. If you can't make it, lecture recordings.
• Lecture notes are on line. Also see Serway and Jewett chapter summaries.
• Prepare for lectures and consolidate after. Try Physclips. Make a period on your timetable.
• Homework. Make a period on your timetable. Homework classes. (Already on timetable, but misleadingly called 'Tutorial'.)
• On-line tutorials. Fortnightly quizzes also on line. Make a period on your timetable.
• Teaching assistants. Room 02, from week 3. Times here.
• Bulletin board for course discussions. Bulletin for general physics questions.
• UNSW Blackboard site for this course.
Lab classes
• Lab classes are on your timetable. Make a period on your timetable for lab preparation.
• You need to do the lab safety on-line unit and score at least 9/10 before the first lab class.
• You must also do lab pre-work before lab classes. For lab exercises, video introductions are available.

Times and places

The times for your labs, lectures and problem solving classes have been allocated centrally by UNSW Student Central and should be printed on your timetable. For problems with your timetable, see the First Year Office.

Students are assigned into three groups (A, B, C) for lectures. The lectures for 1121 and 1131 are identical. See your timetable for the group to which you are assigned. Each group comprises both 1121 and 1131 students and each has the same lecturer. 1121 and 1131 separate for problem solving and tests. All lectures are in the Keith Burrows Theatre, which is on the North side of the Old Main Building, (K14 on the university map.)

The 2011 semester 1 lecture timetable is:

	A group	B group	C group
Lecture 1	Mon 9	Mon 5	Tue 5
Lecture 2	Thur 9	Thur 11	Thur 5
Lecture 3	Fri 9	Fri 1	Fri 3

The best times to consult with me (Joe Wolfe) are Monday 10 and Friday 10, after the lectures. Meet at the East door of the Burrows Theatre and we'll go either the study area or a room t.b.a. for further discussion. You can also find me there immediately after most of the lectures, but not Tuesday 6, Thursday 10 or sometimes Fri 10, because I have other classes. (If these times are inconvenient, there are also the Teaching assistants on duty.)

Timetable will be on the First Year Office site. Currently it is: Monday 11-3, Tuesday 12-4, Wednesday 12-4, Thursday 12-4, Friday 10-12 and 2-4.

Questions

• Questions about the overall administration of the course, including timetables, labs, problem solving classes, should be asked of the First Year Office. Adminstrative arrangements are here. Check that the answer to your question is not on the web page or the noticeboard outside the office before asking.

• Important questions about the physics covered in the syllabus will be of general interest and should be asked of your lecturer in person, either in class when the topic arises or at the end of it. If there is no time, you can also discuss them on the 1121-1131 Bulletin Board, or the subject blog on Blackboard.

• Questions about particular problems on homework sheets will be discussed in the problem solving class, and may also be discussed with one of the Teaching assistants on duty. But first discuss them with other students: if you can work it out together you'll learn more.

• Interesting physics questions that fall outside the syllabus may be asked on Physics Questions, a bulletin board set up specially for physics students in 1121/31 or 1221/31. You may also wish to answer questions on the bulletin board or to contribute to the discussion.

• Questions about assessment need to be asked in public (ideally on the 1121-1131 Bulletin Board) and not in private. It would be unfair to

Syllabi, texts and other important documents

Here is the working syllabus for these courses including the official recommendations about texts. This and other important information are at First Year Syllabi, Assessment etc.
• Course pack, lab book, homework book. Buy the lab notes from the bookshop. Then take your lab book to the First Year Lab, show them the lab notes and they will give you a homework book.

• You will need to have regular access to a text book, even if you don't buy one. Yes, good text books are expensive. If you can't afford one, you might consider using the copies on open reserve in the library, or sharing a text book among two or three students. If you can afford it, it will serve for both the first and second sessions physics subjects, will be great background for second year physics and engineering subjects and you will probably use it as a useful reference book for much of a career in science, technology or engineering. There are also summary slides for Serway and Jewett.

  "The Cartoon Guide to Physics" by L. Gonick and A. Huffman is a really good physics book! It's not a text book----no problems, no references, and it's short on detail – but it's a very good presentation and explanation of much of the material in first year physics courses. Although it's out of print, on-line sellers have new or second-hand copies.

• Please read the UNSW Policy on Academic Misconduct and Student Misconduct (includes Plagiarism). We know that you are honest and most of the document is pretty obvious. However, please read it. The excuse "I didn't know it was wrong" will not work.

Feedback

How will you know if you are keeping up? What feedback will you get?
• Labs are marked as you finish them.

• On-line quizzes are marked as you finish them.

• On-line tutorials give you feedback and hints while you are doing them.

• Homework problems are not marked, but are really good feedback on your understanding, and excellent rehearsals for the end of session test. Make sure you have tried every problem before you go to your problem solving class.

• Exam question of the week. Most homework sheets have a question from a past paper testing the material you have done in each week. (Of course you can also do other appropriate questions from other past papers .)

• The Preliminary test is an optional test, in the style of the end-of-session test, but based on the material covered in the first two weeks or so. Doing this under simulated exam conditions gives you early feedback on how you would go in an exam. Do this test some time after your week 3. Download Marking scheme for self-test, in .pdf format. Do not download this until you have done the self-test.

Information about tests.

• Assessment details for PHYS 1121-1131.
• Tips on doing physics tests.
• UNSW rules on Conduct of examinations.
• A sheet of formulae (mechanics and thermal physics) will be provided in the end-of-session test.
• Not that you'll need it, but the supplementary exam date has been independently set at 4 July.
• Questions about tests. To ensure fairness, any question about the tests must be answered in front of the whole class, on the course bulletin board, or on the blackboard site for this course. A lecturer cannot answer a question about assessment that you ask in person.

Past papers and solutions

Note that the syllabus changed in 2006 and 2008, so some older questions will be no longer relevant. The midsession tests up to 2009 used written answers and thus are in the style of the current end-of-session test. The 2010 test will be multiple choice, and thus in the style of the fortnightly quizzes. The quiz questions will give you practice for the mid-session test. Past papers and solutions are on the First Year Office site.

Lecture notes Lecture notes. The notes linked below are provided so that you can make best use of lecture time. They should not be considered as the syllabus, nor are they a substitute for a text book. These will be added as the course progresses. If you print them out and bring them to the lecture, you will be able to follow the lecture without much writing, although you will probably want to add notes of your own. kinematics notes in .pdf dynamics notes in .pdf energy notes in .pdf gravity notes in .pdf momentum notes in .pdf vector multiplication notes in .pdf rotation notes in .pdf The publishers of Serway and Jewett have summary slides of each chapter. For mechanics, these are here.

Lecture recordings

* Recording starts several minutes late on this one: I forgot to turn the microphone on. Apologies.
** This time the microphone cable broke and the recording cuts out. Apologies again.

Sketched solutions to homework problems

The answers given here are brief – just to give you the skeleton of the solution. The answers to the past exam questions are about the right level for an exam answer. The solutions will be posted after the problem solving classes.

PHYS1121, Solutions to Homework 1
PHYS1131, Solutions to Homework 1
PHYS1121, Solutions to Homework 2
PHYS1131, Solutions to Homework 2
PHYS1121, Solutions to Homework 3
PHYS1131, Solutions to Homework 3

Course links

Links to topics closely related to material in the course.
• Physclips is a multimedia resource covering all of the mechanics and waves sections of the syllabus.

Links to topics raised in lectures, but outside of our syllabus.

• One of the discussions on gravity, from Physics Questions.
• A catalogue of astronomical images. Check out the nebulae!

Other useful links

• Hyperphysics from Georgia State University. Excellent use of html structure. Highly recommended.
• Physics simulations from the University of Colorado.
• The Physics Hypertextbook by Glenn Elert. It is still under construction, however, and most sections are rather incomplete.
• HSC physics resouces. Parts of this, eg the FAQ, might be useful for revision.

• Physics World (on line journal)
• Scientific American (on line journal)
• National Institute of Science and Technology of the USA. Great resource on units and the SI system.

• Plotting and fitting data A good graphing progam with error weighted fitting, written by UNSW student Michael Johnston
• A list of Joe's educational sites.

Miscellany

• Students with disabilities who would like special arrangements are invited to contact the lecturers directly.
• Lecturers (below) are Joe Wolfe (weeks 1-6), Elizabeth Angstmann (weeks 7-9) and John Storey (weeks 10-12).

Special relativity In June 2005, relativity was 100 years old. Our contribution is Einstein Light: relativity in brief... or in detail. It explains the key ideas in a short multimedia presentation, which is supported by links to broader and deeper explanations.