FAQ--answers!
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Where are the notes posted?
 | Notes will be posted in the "notes" section on
every unit's main page. Follow the link to your current unit, then
either click the "unit notes" tab or scroll down to the bottom of the
screen. The notes are just after the terms and equations for that
unit.
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How much homework can
I expect each night?
| You probably won't have a lot of homework every
night, but you should plan on reviewing notes or reading relevant pages
in your textbook on days you have no practice problems or lab reports
assigned. I would suggest planning on 15-30 minutes per night
working on your physics material. Some evenings you may need to
spend more time than that, but that simply depends on three things:
the type of assignment, how efficiently you use class time that is given
for work on assignments, and how much you procrastinate when
you've been given multiple nights to complete an assignment! |
| You will probably have homework 2-3 nights per
week, and probably just about every weekend you'll have some sort of
homework (either a lab or practice problems)
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| How
often will we have quizzes or tests?
| You will have a short quiz every Wednesday,
and you'll have about 15-20 minutes to complete it at the most.
Most quizzes won't even take that long. The Wednesday quiz will
cover the material we had been learning/practicing since the previous
Wednesday quiz. The same concept might show up on the next
quiz if there seemed to be a significant lack of understanding. |
| You will have a longer unit test at the end of
every unit. The length of these tests will vary depending on how
large the unit is. For example, the relatively short Thermal
Physics unit will have a shorter test than the slightly longer Atomic
and Nuclear Physics unit. The Mechanics unit test typically is
spread over 2 days because it is such a large unit.
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Can I turn in the same lab
report (or data table, or graph...) as my partner?
| NO!
 | Lab reports are INDIVIDUALLY completed.
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| Your hypothesis, and if necessary, procedure
steps, must be written in your own words! |
| You typically will have the same raw data as your partner(s), but you
MUST report your results in a data table that you format yourself.
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| Your analysis of the data must be completed on your own, although you
are allowed to collaborate with your partners, provided that your
answers are written in your own words. |
| Any conclusions that are drawn and errors that
are discussed must be done so in your own words...even if you come to
the same conclusion as your partner! |
| Any graph that you need to make must be done
on your own (using LoggerPro). Hopefully you and your partner(s)
will get the same value for a slope, but the formatting of the graph
must be your own. |
| Get the point? No copying of any part of
your lab write-up will be tolerated! |
| The ONLY exception is if you are specifically
told "I want one lab write-up turned in with all partners' names on
it." Don't expect this--it happens once, maybe twice, per
semester, and is usually for a short mini-lab.
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| Why can't we
turn in the same work?
| Two main reasons:
| The only way I can really
assess whether or not you understand how to correctly and efficiently
analyze the data we collect in a lab is if you do your own work.
Same for a conclusion or a written procedure: if you and your
partner turn in the same words, I will have no idea which of you wrote
it, and which of you truly understands what you wrote. |
| It's against school policies
to plagiarize. If you and your partner turn in identical words
for the same assignment, you are both guilty of plagiarism.
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| What happens if we DO turn in
identical (or nearly identical) reports?
| Turning in identical (or nearly
identical) reports falls under the category of plagiarism, which,
according to the Skyline High School student handbook is considered a
form of cheating. |
| If you and your partner are
caught plagiarizing, then the consequences will follow the policies set
forth in the student handbook. |
| At the very least, you will each
receive a zero for the assignment/lab that has been plagiarized.
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| Do we round or truncate our
answers?
| Always
ROUND
your answers
to the correct number of significant figures. NEVER TRUNCATE.
I don't care what is done in math--in Science, we round our answers to
an appropriate number of sig. figs. based on the precision of our
initial data.
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| Do we need to worry about sig.
figs.?
| YES!
In all calculations, we will assume that the numbers
we are given in the problems were measured somehow (unless it's an exact
quantity or an exact conversion). This means that we DO need to
use sig. fig. rules in all problems, and especially in you lab analysis! |
| In your textbook, if a number is
written as 100 m/s, for example, the practical rule of thumb is going to
be to assume that it has 3 sig. figs. Assume there is a decimal
point after the zero in the ones position.
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