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, will be given a list of essential equations. Some of these equations 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. Equations will not be provided for the final exam, but you can bring notes. The final exam will cover the entire course.

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. A complete schedule of final exams can be found on the Baylor Fall 2005 Exam Schedule. 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! No requests to reschedule the final exam will be considered less than 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 may introduce new situations, which will not require much computation to analyze, 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

The multiple choice questions on the hour exams will always request 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 not curved. The scores are normalized such that 60% of the credit on the conceptual questions plus 30% of the credit on the longer problems is required for a passing grade. (A passing grade means a normalized score of 60%.)

Final Exam

The final exam consists only of multiple choice questions. These questions may require some computation, and will be drawn from material covered throughout the course. The types of questions will be similar to homework questions, but not identical, and generally shorter to fit the exam time frame. The grading scale on the final exam may be curved. You should expect that approximately 50% credit is required to pass the final exam.

Preparation for Exams

A common complaint in courses such as this is that the students will say they did well on all the homework, but could not work the exam problems. This is usually a result of incomplete preparation, or relying too strongly on others for help on the homework. The exams test your knowledge more completely than the homework, since they cover more material and force you to make decisions about which concepts apply to the problems.  In the homework, this is usually obvious, since you have just studied the material. It is important to spend enough time on the material to be comfortable with generalizing it to new situations. In the sciences, it is not enough to just know how to solve problems which have been seen before. If you really understood the problems you worked for the homework, and took time to read the book to recognize the concepts (not just equations) that apply, you should have no trouble recognizing the same concepts in the exams.

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.

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.