Exams

Three hour exams will be given during the term. A comprehensive final exam will be given at the end of the course.

Chapters from French's book are denoted with a prefix F, while chapters from Giancoli's book are denoted with a prefix G.

Calculators may be used on the exams. For the hour exams, you will be expected to remember the essential equations. These equations will appear on the review sheets. (See the links in the above schedule.) If you do not have a scientific calculator, you should get one before the first exam. The final exam will cover the entire course. You may bring a page of notes to the final exam.

Missed Exams

There will be one makeup exam near the end of the semester. If you miss an exam for a valid and documented reason, you may request a makeup exam on the makeup date. The exam will cover all exams missed by any students taking the exam. You must make this request within one week of the missed exam, unless an emergency prevents this.

You must make every effort not to miss the final exam, since there is no makeup final. In case of a missed final, Baylor policy requires an incomplete, which must be resolved in the next semester. Baylor policy permits the schedule to be changed if three final exams are scheduled on one day. If you have a conflict, you must resolve it by mutual arrangement between the professors of the courses involved. Normally, exams for non-major electives will be rescheduled before exams in major or required courses. Check your final exam schedule now! Any request to reschedule a final exam must be made at least 30 days before the exam.

Exam Structure and Strategy

The hour exams will normally have two or three homework-style questions, plus some multiple choice or verbal questions which will test your understanding of the concepts in the chapters covered. The homework-style questions will be closely modeled on assigned problems, but will not duplicate them exactly. To do well on these, you should be sure to understand the reasoning behind the solutions to each problem, not just memorize which equations were used. The conceptual questions will not require much computation, but will focus on central concepts covered in the course.

You should write your answers as neatly as possible to achieve the greatest possible credit. Be complete, and show all equations used. If you are not sure of the equations, try explaining what you would do in words. Just because you are stuck on a problem does not mean you should panic. Use strategy to get as much credit as possible on the problem.  Do not turn in blank problems if you can avoid it. Partial credit will be awarded generously on exams, if you provide enough information to merit it. The final exam will be entirely in multiple choice format, so partial credit is not applicable. The problems on the final exam will be shorter to allow all topics to be covered.

Grading of Exams

On a free-format problem, or any problem requesting an explanation, be sure to write something, since even a wrong answer can receive some credit if the explanation is good. On the problems, write enough to show your reasoning process. Correct equations are more important than correct numbers, but they must be written clearly enough to tell what you are doing. Even if your answer is wrong, you can still get almost full credit if the steps leading to it are conceptually correct.

Exam grades are resecaled so that just over 1/3 of the points are required for a minimal D (60%). This is done to reflect the increased difficulty of working problems in a timed situation, and is not a traditional curve, since it is independent of the average on the exam. Grades of 0 or 100% are unchanged in this rescaling.

Preparation for Exams

A good way to prepare for exams is to review your old homework, both the problems and conceptual questions, and also any examples worked in class. The exam problems will generally be similar to these. Concentrate on the early set-up parts of the problem, since this is usually what causes the most trouble in a timed situation. You must practice to be able to identify the relevant concepts in a problem quickly. Try doing this without looking at the answers. If a certain type of problem continues to cause trouble, try working it repeatedly, after waiting a few days between attempts. On exams, you will normally see the medium-difficulty problems, which do not have excessively long solutions or too much algebra to complete in the time allotted on an exam. Exam problems are usually broken into pieces to see if you understand each step in the solution.

You can help avoid difficulties on the exams by going back and reading the chapter after you did the homework, so that you are sure you understand the concepts and their physical meaning. Physics is not about finding the equation that has the same symbols in it as your problem. Those symbols have a meaning, and you will do much better in the course if you take the time to learn the physics behind the equations.

A small number of questions may be ones you have not seen before. This is to test your ability to generalize from what you have learned. There is no real-world value to simply memorizing the solutions to past problems. The true test is whether you can apply what you have learned to new situations. I expect this level of understanding for an "A", so a few questions will test your ability to apply physical reasoning to new situations.

Another way to avoid trouble on the exams is to be sure you can work every problem yourself. Working through someone else's solution is no substitute for puzzling through the problem on your own.  Those frustrating moments (or hours) when you can't figure out which equations apply, or when you don't seem to have all the variables you need, are the same moments when most of your learning is occurring. The amount of hard effort you put into this course is directly proportional to what you will get out of it. There are no shortcuts to learning physics.