Instructor Information

• Instructor: Wayne Polyzou
• Office: 306 Van Allen Hall
• Office Hours: MWF 12:30-1:30
• E-mail: polyzou@uiowa.edu
• Phone: 319-335-1856
• TA:
• E-mail:
• Office:
• Office Hours: M
• Phone:

Grading Policy

Possible final grades are A+,A,B,C,D,F,I. The grade of A+ is for performance that is a full grade above an A. Grades are based on homework scores (15%), lab scores (15%), two mid term exam scores (20% each), and the final exam (30%). All exams will be graded by hand; all grades will be curved to a mean of seventy and a standard deviation of fifteen.

total score =
.15 (70 + (15/sd_lab)*(lab_score - mean_lab)) +
.15 (70 + (15/sd_hw)*(hw_score - mean_hw))+
.2 (70 + (15/sd_ex1)*(ex1_score - mean_ex1))+
.2 (70 + (15/sd_ex2)*(ex2_score - mean_ex2))+
.3 (70 + (15/sd_fex)*(fex_score - mean_fex))

The College of Liberal Arts recommends the following grade distributions for intermediate level courses: A 18%, B 36%, C 39%, D 5%, F 2%. These guidelines will be used as a first approximation in assigning final grades.

Homework will be due on Friday's before 5:00pm. The homework assignments use Wiley plus. They will be made available on the Fridays before they are due. The exams, which are responsible from most of the course grade, will be graded by hand. You must show your work in order to get credit for your answer. The exam questions will involve calculations and may also involve derivations. There will be NO multiple choice questions. Because of this I strongly suggest that in doing the homework you get in the habit of writing out your solutions on paper before entering them in Wiley plus. This will help you get used to my expectations for exam solutions. As physicists, or more generally scientists or engineers, it is also important to be able to communicate the steps and logic used in your arguments. Writing out your homework solutions is good practice for developing the type of communication skills that you will need as a professional scientist or engineer. I will post written solutions to the homework assignments on the class web page which will serve to provide an illustration of how to express your homework solutions.

Lectures, homework assignments, solutions, the course calendar, and notices will appear on the web version of this syllabus (http://www.physics.uiowa.edu/~wpolyzou/phys28/). It can also be reached from the Physics Department's web page under course web pages. There is also a link in ICON. The lectures will be live streamed (see ICON) and recorded.

Participation in the laboratory portion of the course is required. The grade of "I" will be assigned to students who miss more than one laboratory. For students who are unable or choose to note be on campus due to covid 19 should concact me. I will assign you a lab partner who will supply you with data from the lab which you can use to prepare your own report.

General Information

Homework Assignments and Calendar

• Week 1
• Monday, January 25
• Lecture 1:
• Reading: 21.1-21.3: electric charge, Coulomb's law, superposition, charge quantization
• Wednesday, January 27
• Lecture 2:
• Reading: 21.1-21.3: continuous charge distributions, charge conservation.
  
• Friday, January 29
• Lecture 3:
• Reading: 22.1-22.3 electric fields, field lines, superposition principle.
• Homework #1: 21.1, 21.2, 21.3, 21.7, 21.14, 21.24 due 2/5