PHYS2006: Course Information

Prerequisites

The course will assume familiarity with the first year physics and mathematics core courses, particularly PHYS1013, PHYS1015, MATH1006/8 and MATH1007.

Teaching Staff

Prof. S. Moretti is the course coordinator and principal lecturer. His office is Room 5043 in the Physics Department, and he can be contacted on telephone extension 26829 or by email as stefano@soton.ac.uk

Course Structure

The course comprises about 30 lectures, three per week. Each week there is a one hour workshop where you work on a problem set. At the workshop you hand in answers for the previous week's problem set (at the beginning of it !) and receive marked answers from the problem set handed in the previous week. There are 11 workshop sessions and 11 problem sheets assessed.

Class Size and Organisation

This is a core course for BSc and MPhys students so all second year physicists attend. There are also some non-physics students. Currently there are 140+ students in total. For 2014/15 lectures are on Mondays (09:00 to 10:00) and Thursdays (10:00 to 12:00). There is one problem class (workshop) each week for 11 weeks starting from the first one on Tuesdays (09:00 to 10:00).

Course Materials

A handout of printed notes is available (a copy is provided for every student at the start of the course). These notes are not necessarily complete however. A similar set of the lecturer's notes can be downloaded here in PostScript (PS) and here in Portable Document Format (PDF). The course has a Web home page.

Study Requirements and Assessment

Since it is part of your physics foundation, this course's orientation is towards problem solving, based on a small number of principles. It is very important that you study the weekly problem sheets. They count for 20% of the marks for the course.

The examination will contain two sections, section A with a number of short questions (typically five) all of which must be answered, and section B with four questions from which you must answer two and only two. Section A carries 1/3 and section B carries 2/3 of the examination marks. The examination marks count 80% of the course total. Note that the exam occurs right after the course is given: please don't fall into the trap of letting things slide and trying to ``learn it up'' later.

Student Assessment of the Course

Informal feedback to the lecturer is always welcomed. Individual problems can usually be dealt with by the workshop leaders, but if several people share a problem they may like to consult the lecturer together. Students' opinions are canvassed by a questionnaire issued around one third of the way through the course. The responses are reviewed by lecturer and can be discussed within the Staff Student Liaison Committee. There is also a questionnaire at the end of the course.
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Last updated: 9 Jan 2015