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.
PHYS2006 contents page | Feedback
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Last updated: 9 Jan 2015