Announcements

April 2, 2007

The quiz on Thursday will be split into two parts. The first part will be worked in small groups, assigned as announced in class. The guidelines for the group quiz are online.

March 20, 2007

A Few Points of Immediate Interest

A one-page document describing the restricted conditions under which it is possible to make up a missed lab is available online. It is an 84 KByte PDF file.

A Web page is available for providing anonymous feedback to the instructor on any aspect of the course. If you want a direct response, or simply prefer to identify yourself, use the weekly Feedback Questions in LON-CAPA, or just send an E-mail to piccard@ohio.edu.

Please immediately confirm that you can login to LON-CAPA. If you encounter difficulties, please inform the instructor promptly.

CAPA Full Assignment Printing

When you are looking at the first problem, click the "PRT" button on the remote control. Then click on the second choice in the long list: "Selected Problems in Assignment 1" and proceed. That will print all of them.

CAPA Problem Precision

In general, CAPA will tolerate an answer that is within ± 1% of the answer it is programmed to expect. Therefore, your life will be simpler if you retain as many extra significant figures throughout the calculation as needed to ensure that your final answer has three significant figures, and that you enter all three of those significant figures for your answer.

Units in Calculations

Those who are in any doubt of their command of the standard rules for units in calculations are invited to read the material in the text on pages 3 through 9, and the material that is online at

http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~piccard/phys251/units.html

For practice, you may wish to work the problems at the end of that Web page, or problems 18 through 42 on page 15 of the text (see the text, page A-1, for answers to odd-numbered problems). If in doubt, please feel free to submit your work to me by e-mail or in writing.

Significant Figures

Those who are in any doubt of their command of the standard rules for significant figures are invited to read the material in the text on pages 10 through 12, and the material that is online at

http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~piccard/radnotes/data.html#sigfig

This is a section within a larger document that was written for a different course. You should read up to the header "2. Single Variable Functions". For practice, you may wish to work problems 9 and 10 at the end of that Web page, or problems 45 through 49 on pages 15 and 16 of the text (see the text, page A-1, for answers to odd-numbered problems). If in doubt, please feel free to submit your work to me by e-mail or in writing.

It is wise to carry at least one extra figure through all intermediate calculations, rounding-off to the correct number of significant figures only at the end. This practice of using a "guard digit" reduces the compounding of round-off errors with the unavoidable experimental fluctuations, and in this day of cheap calculators adds little to the work or to the likelihood of mistakes.

Dick Piccard revised this file (http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~piccard/phys251/announce.html) on the dates indicated above.

Please E-Mail comments or suggestions to "piccard@ohio.edu".