Marking: See "Essentials 101" handout from Week 1.
Textbook: P.A. Tipler, "Physics" (Worth)
References:
ASSIGNMENTS are handed out at a Physics lecture and posted on the Science 1 Physics Web site almost every week. Solutions are posted on the Web site a week later. Although the assignments are not all marked for credit, they are an essential part of the learning process. Each student should first attempt each problem independently before consulting colleagues or instructors; but help is always available.
PHYSICS PHUN: Often the week will begin (on Monday at 10:30 AM) with a friendly team competition to see which group of 3 or 4 students can come up with the most inventive, imaginative, rigourous, creative or correct solution to a Physics problem posed at the beginning of the hour. These are often frivolous, sometimes silly, but usually fun; hence the awful pun: Physics Phun.
READING: We do not follow the texbook slavishly, though it is a very good one. Reading assignments "jump around" in the text and regularly include supplementary handouts, Web links (particularly the Science 1 HyperTextBook, which see) or journal references. You may often wish to explore interesting topics further; we will be glad to suggest sources.
SURFING: We make liberal use of the Internet in Science 1, both for "external" reference material and for "internal" logistics and communication. Most printed handouts are also available via the World Wide Web as HTML documents. We have several Web sites of our own (see http://musr.physics.ubc.ca/~jess/sci1/) where you can peruse course material such as handouts, assignments, solutions, old exams etc. You will be able to send E-mail to other Science 1 students or faculty - in fact some assignments will require E-mail submission - and disk space will be provided for individual or group Web projects when appropriate.
HYPERTEXTBOOK: In Summer 1999 we constructed an "alpha test" version of the Science 1 HyperTextBook, an interactive database of "learning quanta" which we hope will eventually serve as a model for interdisciplinary education using the Web. All Science 1 students are guaranteed access to the Web and are expected to become co-authors of the HyperTextBook. (You'll see how when you try it out.)
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY: You are here to learn Physics, the discipline, not "about Physics." On the other hand, until quite recently Physics was known officially as Natural Philosophy; moreover, modern Physics has drastically altered the ways we perceive the world we live in. It would be tragic to learn how to predict the behaviour of (some parts of) that world without stopping to reflect on the philosophical implications of our new knowledge. A knowledge of Physics is valuable for its predictive power - the tools of Physics allow us to build wonderful devices, to manipulate matter profitably and to move wisely through our physical environment. An understanding of Physics requires integration of new paradigms and metaphors into one's intellectual repertoire - your mind will be permanently altered by this experience.
THE FIRST-YEAR SYNDROME: Any first year Physics course must necessarily be devoted largely to building up a "Physics vocabulary" of terms and concepts that are generally labelled as "classical" Physics, so that later courses can utilise that vocabulary to describe the unsettling conceptual revisions of the Twentieth Century - some of which render obsolete the very terminology in which we attempt to describe them. This tends to make the first year relatively dull; many physicists, looking back, feel that their first year course was the low point of their Physics education. We do everything in our power to counteract this functional dilemma, but if it occasionally gets a little tedious, please remember this: there can be no magic without some apprenticeship.
SCIENCE 1 PHYSICS:
How does Science 1 Physics differ from other first year
Physics courses? One difference is obvious and somewhat trivial,
but nonetheless profoundly important: since the teaching staff of
Science 1 attend each other's lectures, we all know what
is going on in the other subjects, whereas
professors teaching "normal" Physics courses usually have no idea
what is happening in their students' Mathematics, Chemistry or
Biology courses. It is human nature to notice connections between
topics in different fields and to want to discuss them
- the Science 1 environment simply allows this natural
tendency to express itself creatively.