PHYS 1P22/92: Introductory Physics II
Brock University, Spring 2024
Course Logo

Table of contents

Course overview ^

PHYS 1P22/92 provides a first university-level introduction to many important and exciting concepts in physics, including fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, electricity and magnetism, optics, relativity, and quantum mechanics. By successfully finishing this course, you will gain fundamental insight into how our universe works, and will be prepared for more advanced studies in physics and all other areas of science.

As this course is a continuation of PHYS 1P21/91, students must take PHYS 1P21/91 before they can register in PHYS 1P22/92, unless they obtain special permission from the instructor. Please note that PHYS 1P22/92 contains considerably more material than PHYS 1P21/91, and will require you to understand about twice as many concepts in the same amount of time.

The official textbook for this course is College Physics, 2nd Edition, available freely online at OpenStax. This textbook contains all of the material in the course, aside from occasional bonus material that will be introduced in lectures. Please see the course outline below for information regarding which parts of the textbook will be covered in the course.

Both PHYS 1P22 and PHYS 1P92 share the same theoretical lectures, at the same time and place. The only difference is that PHYS 1P92 includes laboratory sessions as well. For this reason, both PHYS 1P22 and PHYS 1P92 also share the same Microsoft Teams, Crowdmark, and Mobius sites. The Brightspace site will only be used for the PHYS 1P92 labs, so if you are in PHYS 1P22 you will not be using Brightspace.

IMPORTANT: Announcements from the professor, containing crucial information and ongoing updates about the course, will be posted throughout the term on Microsoft Teams, in the "Announcements" channel. To make sure you get notified of these announcements, please go to the course Teams site, click on the three dots to the right of "Announcements", then go to "Channel notifications" and choose the option "All activity", as shown in this screenshot:

How to enable announcement notifications

Please also bookmark the course Teams site in your browser, install Teams on your phone, and enable notifications on the phone app!

It is your responsibility to follow the announcements and read all of them thoroughly on a regular basis. No accommodations will be made for students who fail to satisfy the course requirements due to not reading the professor's announcements!

Course syllabus ^

The course website also doubles as the course syllabus. If you need the syllabus in PDF format, simply click here to print it and choose "Save to PDF".

About the professor ^

The professor for this course is Dr. Barak Shoshany (ħe/ħim). I did my BSc in mathematics and physics at Tel Aviv University in Israel and my MSc and PhD at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario. I then taught at the University of Toronto for a short time. I joined Brock University as Assistant Professor in September 2020, and I also regularly teach scientific computing at McMaster University.

I am a theoretical, mathematical, and computational physicist. My research focuses on the nature of time and causality in general relativity and quantum mechanics, as well as symbolic and high-performance scientific computing. I'm always happy to talk about my research, and theoretical physics in general, so please feel free to ask me about it, both in and out of class!

I also love teaching. I developed 10 full-term undergraduate and graduate courses from scratch since 2020, including 5 physics courses, 3 astronomy courses, 1 scientific computing course, and 1 mathematics course. My devotion to teaching won me the Brock University Faculty of Mathematics & Science Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2023.

When I'm not teaching or doing research, I love composing music, playing video games, board games, and tabletop role-playing games, and reading or watching science fiction and fantasy. Please see my personal website for details on my research, teaching, talks, media interviews, music compositions, and more.

My office is located in room E219 in the Mackenzie Chown Complex (MC). I do not have fixed office hours. You are welcome to drop by my office unannounced whenever you want, but I'm not there too often. If you would like to meet, please email me at bshoshany@brocku.ca, and I would be happy to schedule a meeting, either online or in my office.

Schedule and lectures ^

The course will take place during the Spring 2024 term, in the D1 duration, from April 29 to July 12, 2024. The last day to withdraw without academic penalty is June 14. There will be two 2-hour lectures each week:

  • Tuesdays 10:00-12:00.
  • Thursdays 10:00-12:00.

We will have 20 lectures, for a total of 40 lecture hours. The lecture schedule will change on the following dates:

  • There will be an additional lecture on Monday, April 29 (the first day of the term). While Mondays are usually reserved for quizzes, we cannot have a quiz on the first day of classes, so we will have a lecture instead.
  • The lecture on Tuesday, May 21 will be replaced with a quiz, and we will have a makeup lecture on Friday, May 17 at 10:00 instead.
  • We will not have any lectures during the Spring Gap Week, June 3-7.
  • The lecture on Tuesday, July 2 will be replaced with a quiz, and we will have a makeup lecture on Friday, July 5 at 10:00 instead.
  • The lecture on Thursday, July 11 (the last day of the term) will be canceled so you can use that day to study for the final exam.

The lectures will take place in person at ST 108 (Arthur Schmon Tower room 108). For your convenience, here is the full list of lecture days, times, and locations:

  • Lecture 1: Monday, April 29, 10:00-12:00, ST 108
  • Lecture 2: Tuesday, April 30, 10:00-12:00, ST 108
  • Lecture 3: Thursday, May 2, 10:00-12:00, ST 108
  • Lecture 4: Tuesday, May 7, 10:00-12:00, ST 108
  • Lecture 5: Thursday, May 9, 10:00-12:00, ST 108
  • Lecture 6: Tuesday, May 14 10:00-12:00, ST 108
  • Lecture 7: Thursday, May 16, 10:00-12:00, ST 108
  • Lecture 8: Friday, May 17, 10:00-12:00, ST 108
  • Lecture 9: Thursday, May 23, 10:00-12:00, ST 108
  • Lecture 10: Tuesday, May 28, 10:00-12:00, ST 108
  • Lecture 11: Thursday, May 30, 10:00-12:00, ST 108
  • Lecture 12: Tuesday, June 11, 10:00-12:00, ST 108
  • Lecture 13: Thursday, June 13, 10:00-12:00, ST 108
  • Lecture 14: Tuesday, June 18, 10:00-12:00, ST 108
  • Lecture 15: Thursday, June 20, 10:00-12:00, ST 108
  • Lecture 16: Tuesday, June 25, 10:00-12:00, ST 108
  • Lecture 17: Thursday, June 27, 10:00-12:00, ST 108
  • Lecture 18: Thursday, July 4, 10:00-12:00, ST 108
  • Lecture 19: Friday, July 5, 10:00-12:00, ST 108
  • Lecture 20: Tuesday, July 9, 10:00-12:00, ST 108

Contacting the professor ^

Students are invited to contact the professor via the following methods:

  • All non-personal questions related to the course, whether about the material, lectures, textbook, logistics, exams, or anything else, should be posted publicly on Microsoft Teams, in the General channel.
  • All personal questions involving private information that cannot be posted publicly on Teams, such as grades or medical issues, should be sent to me directly via email to bshoshany@brocku.ca or via direct message on Teams.

Personal vs. non-personal questions

There are several reasons for asking you to post your question on Teams:

  • Posting questions publicly on Teams allows other students to see the questions and benefit from the answers.
  • Creating new posts on Teams encourages other students to add their own followup questions and triggers valuable discussions about the subject matter that would not have happened otherwise.

I promise to answer all questions posted on Teams as soon as I can - emailing me or messaging me directly won't get you an answer any faster!

If you have a non-personal question that you don't want to ask in public on Teams, you can email me your question, but please let me know why you are asking it in private, otherwise I will just ask you to post it on Teams instead. Please note that if I believe my answer could be of use to other students, I may post your question and my answer on Teams (without mentioning your name), unless you explicitly ask me not to.

Other important rules

If you email me, please make sure to do so from your Brock email account, not from your personal account, since otherwise I have no way to verify your identity. I will not be able to share or discuss any personal details with you if you contact me from your non-Brock email.

Please only message me once; do not send me the same message both by email and on Teams. This will not get me to respond any faster. I get notifications for both emails and Teams messages on my phone as soon as they are received, so if you do this I'll simply get two separate notifications for the same message, which will just annoy me and make me less likely to respond to your message quickly.

IMPORTANT: In my experience, many of the questions asked by students throughout the term already have answers either on the course website or in Teams discussions and announcements. Therefore, before you ask a question, please check if perhaps it already has an answer on this website or on Teams - that way, you won't have to wait for a response.

Lastly, please do not email the professor with any lab-related matters. Any inquiries regarding the PHYS 1P92 labs must be sent directly to the Senior Lab Coordinator at phys1p92@brocku.ca.

Course outline ^

The course material will consist of the following sections of the textbook College Physics, 2nd Edition:

  • Chapter 1 (The Nature of Science and Physics): Already covered in PHYS 1P21/91.
  • Chapter 2 (1D Kinematics): Already covered in PHYS 1P21/91.
  • Chapter 3 (2D Kinematics): Already covered in PHYS 1P21/91.
  • Chapter 4 (Force and Newton's Laws of Motion): Already covered in PHYS 1P21/91.
  • Chapter 5 (Friction, Drag, and Elasticity): Already covered in PHYS 1P21/91.
  • Chapter 6 (Uniform Circular Motion and Gravitation): Already covered in PHYS 1P21/91.
  • Chapter 7 (Work, Energy, and Energy Resources): Already covered in PHYS 1P21/91.
  • Chapter 8 (Linear Momentum and Collisions): Already covered in PHYS 1P21/91.
  • Chapter 9 (Statics and Torque): Already covered in PHYS 1P21/91.
  • Chapter 10 (Rotational Motion & Angular Momentum): Sections 10.1-10.5.
  • Chapter 11 (Fluid Statics): Sections 11.1-11.7.
  • Chapter 12 (Fluid Dynamics): Sections 12.1-12.3.
  • Chapter 13 (Temperature & Gas Laws): Sections 13.1-13.5.
  • Chapter 14 (Heat): Sections 14.1-14.4.
  • Chapter 15 (Thermodynamics): Sections 15.1-15.4, 15.6-15.7.
  • Chapter 16 (Oscillatory Motion & Waves): Already covered in PHYS 1P21/91.
  • Chapter 17 (Physics of Hearing): Already covered in PHYS 1P21/91.
  • Chapter 18 (Electric Charge & Electric Field): Sections 18.1-18.5, 18.7.
  • Chapter 19 (Electric Potential & Electric Energy): Sections 19.1-19.7.
  • Chapter 20 (Electric Current & Resistance): Sections 20.1-20.5.
  • Chapter 21 (Circuits & DC Instruments): Section 21.1.
  • Chapter 22 (Magnetism): Sections 22.1-22.5, 22.9.
  • Chapter 23 (Electromagnetic Induction & AC Circuits): Skipping.
  • Chapter 24 (Electromagnetic Waves): Sections 24.1-24.4.
  • Chapter 25 (Geometric Optics): Sections 25.1-25.7.
  • Chapter 26 (Vision & Optical Instruments): Skipping.
  • Chapter 27 (Wave Optics): Sections 27.1-27.5, 27.8, if time permits.
  • Chapter 28 (Special Relativity): Sections 28.1-28.6, if time permits.
  • Chapter 29 (Quantum Physics): Sections 29.1-29.8, if time permits. Some of the material was already covered in PHYS 1P21/91, but we will take a deeper dive in this course.

All chapters marked as "already covered in PHYS 1P21/91" are required as mandatory background material for PHYS 1P22/92, and all 1P22/92 quizzes and exams will assume that you know all of the 1P21/91 material. Please make sure to review this material if needed!

Chapters 30-34 will not be covered in this course, but students are strongly encouraged to read them for general knowledge, and discuss them with other students and with the professor on Teams.

Lecture slides ^

The slides for the lectures correspond to textbook chapters, to keep things organized. They will be posted here once we finish each chapter.

Weekly progress ^

As the course progresses, this section will be updated to indicate what we learned each week, and in particular, what material will be covered in the weekly quizzes and final exam.

  • Week 1 (material for quiz 1): Sections 10.1-10.5, 11.1-11.7.
  • Week 2 (material for quiz 2): Sections 12.1-12.3, 13.1-13.3.
  • Week 3 (material for quiz 3): Sections 13.4-13.5, 14.1-14.4.
  • Week 4 (material for quiz 4): Sections 15.1-15.4.
  • Week 5 (material for quiz 5): Sections 15.6-15.7, 18.1-18.2.
  • Week 6 (material for quiz 6): Sections 18.3-18.5, 18.7, 19.1-19.4.
  • Week 7 (material for quiz 7): Sections 19.5-19.7, 20.1-20.5.
  • Week 8 (material for quiz 8): Sections 21.1, 22.1-22.5, 22.9.
  • Week 9 (material for quiz 9): Sections 24.1-24.4.
  • Week 10 (no quiz): Sections 25.1-25.7.

If a textbook section is listed here, then the entire section will be covered in that week's quiz and in the final exam. This includes any parts of that section that may have been omitted or skimmed during the lectures due to lack of time. Students are expected to study any omitted parts on their own, and encouraged to ask questions on Teams or during the next lecture if anything is unclear. Conversely, any chapter or section not listed here will not be covered in the quizzes or final exam.

Homework assignments ^

Weekly homework assignments will be given online through Mobius. Note that Mobius must be accessed through Brightspace via the "Content" tab. The Mobius system will present you with questions, and you will enter your final answer for each question. The system will let you know if your answer is correct. If it's not correct, please go back to your derivation and try to figure out where you went wrong.

The homework assignments are not graded, and you do not need to submit them to anyone. The goal is for you to solve them on your own, with feedback from Mobius. As Mobius does not check your derivation of the solution, only the final result, you are strongly encouraged to post your derivations on Teams and compare them with those posted by other students. You are also welcome to ask any questions you may have about the homework assignments on Teams.

The weekly assignments contain a small number of questions that should provide the minimum necessary practice for each week's quiz. However, please note that solving the homework assignments is only necessary, not sufficient, for success in the quiz.

At the end of each chapter of the textbook there are many practice questions, both conceptual and quantitative. Solving as many questions from the relevant textbook sections as possible will greatly improve your success in the quizzes and the final exam. The main advantage of the Mobius questions is that you get immediate feedback, but you are always welcome to ask on Teams if you require any feedback regarding the textbook questions.

The quiz may contain questions that are unrelated to the homework questions, and conversely, not all homework questions are necessarily related to questions that will be in the quiz. It's up to you to make sure you understand all the material we learned during the week, not just the material related to the homework questions. This will be important for the final exam.

IMPORTANT: When solving quantitative questions, whether from the homework or elsewhere, it is important to always provide complete analytical derivations of any quantities you need to calculate. "Analytical" means all variables must remain undetermined, i.e. just letters, without putting any numbers into any of the variables. In the quizzes and final exam you will be required to provide analytical derivations without any specific numerical values given to you. All necessary steps of the derivation must be provided for a full mark.

Labs (PHYS 1P92 only) ^

All lab-related materials and information can be found on Brightspace. If you have any questions about the labs, please contact the Senior Lab Coordinator at phys1p92@brocku.ca. Please do not contact the professor regarding any lab-related matters!

Passing grade

A minimum passing grade of 60% overall is needed to be eligible to receive 1P92 credit. If the overall lab grade is lower than 60%, students will be eligible for credit in PHYS 1P22 only. Lab reports are due at noon, five days after the scheduled lab session.

The lab report late submission policy is as follows:

Lateness Maximum Possible grade
less than 24 h 70%
less than 48 h 40%
less than 72 h 10%

The late penalty will be waived for special cases only (i.e. medical or compassionate considerations). Documentation will be required.

Completing all labs, and submitting written lab reports, is required to complete the lab component of the course.

If you have any questions about the late submission policy, or need to be considered for penalty waiver, please email phys1p92@brocku.ca.

Lab credit policy

You attempted PHYS 1P91/1P92 in the past...

  1. ...and you passed the course: Congratulations!
  2. ...and you did not pass the course because of falling short in some combination of...:
    • weekly quizzes,
    • not achieving 50% on the final exam, and/or
    • not achieving 60% for the lab grade requirement:
    1. If your previous lab grade was > 60%, you will not need to complete the labs again, unless you'd like to attempt for a better lab grade. You will need to repeat the theory part of the course. In this case, you must also contact the senior lab coordinator at phys1p92@brocku.ca for further instructions on how to register for the 1P91/1P92 course in its next offering.
    2. If your previous lab grade was < 60%, you will have to register for the next offering of 1P91/1P92 and repeat the entire course.
  3. ...and you passed, BUT you were given credit for PHYS 1P21/1P22 only:
    • You are still missing the lab component! We offer credit in 1P21/1P22 for students whose only failing was the lab component of the course. You can complete the lab-only component during the next offering of the PHYS 1P91/1P92 course and be upgraded to 1P91/1P92. Please contact the senior lab coordinator at phys1p92@brocku.ca.

You successfully completed PHYS 1P21/1P22 in the past...

  • ...and you now need a Physics course with a lab component: Please contact the senior lab coordinator at phys1p92@brocku.ca. You can complete the lab-only component during the next offering of the PHYS 1P91/1P92 course and be upgraded to 1P91/1P92.

If you are going for one of the "upgrade" options, and are contacting the senior lab coordinator:

  • Email them at phys1p92@brocku.ca at least a few weeks before the beginning of term.
  • Include all pertinent details (your situation, when you last took the course, your grades, etc).

The senior lab coordinator will help arrange the lab section for you, and informally register you in the course. You will be given access to all lab material on the learning management system.

At the end of a successful attempt at the lab credit, the physics department will submit a change of grade form to the Registrar's office.

Note:

  1. Your new final grade is calculated based on the grade composition set during the semester you completed the original course.
  2. Once the upgrade is completed by the Registrar's office, you will be charged the non-refundable lab fees for the PHYS 1P91 and/or PHYS 1P92 lab course.
  3. The Physics Department will not allow resubmission of old lab reports; all work completed must be original. The department uses TurnItIn to enforce this rule.
  4. You will not be allowed to complete PHYS 1P92 labs until you have successfully completed PHYS 1P91 labs.

Quizzes and exams ^

Weekly quizzes

There will be in-person quizzes every week at the following day and time:

  • Mondays 10:00-12:00.

The quiz schedule will change on the following dates:

  • There will be no quiz on Monday, April 29 (the first day of the term). While Mondays are usually reserved for quizzes, we cannot have a quiz on the first day of classes, so we will have a lecture instead.
  • Monday, May 20 (Victoria Day) - we will not have a quiz on that day. The quiz will be on Tuesday, May 21 at 10:00 instead of the lecture, and we will have a makeup lecture on Friday, May 17 at 10:00.
  • Monday, July 1 (Canada Day) - we will not have a quiz on that day. The quiz will be on Tuesday, July 2 at 10:00 instead of the lecture, and we will have a makeup lecture on Friday, July 5 at 10:00.
  • Monday, June 3 (during Spring Gap Week) - we will not have a quiz on that day. Quizzes will resume as normal the following week.

Each week's quiz will review the material of the previous week, meaning that quiz 1 will review the material learned in week 1, and so on. Furthermore, there will be no quiz covering week 10; that material will only be covered in the final exam.

The quizzes will take place in person at ST 108 (Arthur Schmon Tower room 108), the same room as the lectures. For your convenience, here is the full list of quiz days, times, and locations:

  • Quiz 1: Monday, May 6 at 10:00, ST 108
  • Quiz 2: Monday, May 13 at 10:00, ST 108
  • Quiz 3: Tuesday, May 21 at 10:00, ST 108
  • Quiz 4: Monday, May 27 at 10:00, ST 108
  • Quiz 5: Monday, June 10 at 10:00, ST 108
  • Quiz 6: Monday, June 17 at 10:00, ST 108
  • Quiz 7: Monday, June 24 at 10:00, ST 108
  • Quiz 8: Tuesday, July 2 at 10:00, ST 108
  • Quiz 9: Monday, July 8 at 10:00, ST 108

Each quiz will last exactly 1 hour. Note that there are 2 hours scheduled for the quiz, 10:00-12:00, but the second hour is only for students who have extra time accommodations through SAS.

The quizzes will consist of freeform questions. You must show your work to get full marks on your answer. You may get partial marks if your final answer is incorrect but your derivation is mostly correct.

Regarding significant figures, the general rule that always applies in physics applies in the exams as well: your final answer should have the same number of significant figures as the least precise numerical quantity in the question. See section 1.3 of the textbook for more information.

Final exam

In addition, this course will have an in-person final exam. It will be in the exact same format as the quizzes, but it will last 2 hours, and will cover the material of the entire course.

The final exam will take place on Saturday, July 13 at 14:00 at STH215 (South Block room 215).

Missed exams ^

If you miss a quiz or exam, please email the professor within 7 days. Your email should explain why you missed the exam and include any necessary proof, such as a doctor's note.

  • If you missed a quiz and I accept your reason for missing it, that quiz will then not count towards your final course grade, meaning that the weight of all other quizzes will be increased appropriately. There will not be an option to take the quiz at a later date, since there is a quiz every week and we cannot have two different dates for every single quiz.
  • If you missed the final exam and I accept your reason for missing it, the exam will then not count towards your final course grade, meaning that it will be determined only by the quizzes and labs. There will not be an option to take the exam at a later date; however, if a large number of students missed the exam, a makeup exam may be scheduled at the professor's discretion.

If you are late to a quiz or exam, you will not get any extra time, so please make sure to be at the exam room at least 15 minutes before the beginning of the exam!

Extra time accommodations ^

Since we have a small class, students with extra time accommodations will take the quizzes and final exam with everyone else, not at the SAS Exam Centre. However, they will be allowed more time. This will ensure that the students have direct access to the professor so they can ask questions and receive important announcements and potential corrections during the exams.

If you have extra time accommodations, please email your Approved Accommodations Summary letter (as a PDF file) to the professor as soon as possible. Without this PDF file, you will not be allowed any extra time.

Please make sure you appear on the OASIS portal, and that you have a valid Approved Accommodations Summary letter (specific for this course and this term), before emailing the professor. If you don't know what these things mean, please ask your case manager at Student Accessibility Services.

Allowed material and academic integrity ^

During the quizzes and exams, you may use notes containing any material of your choice, printed or handwritten, up to 10 double-sided papers for each quiz and up to 100 double-sided papers for the final exam. You may also use a physical calculator, but not an app or a graphing calculator.

Computers, phones, tablets, smart watches, and other digital devices cannot be used in the exams. Any students found in possession of a digital device of any kind (other than a calculator) during the exam will be considered as having used the device, and will be disciplined accordingly.

You will not be given any formulas in the exam, so it is highly recommended to include in your notes any formulas that might be relevant. However, you do not need to include the numerical values of any constants in your material; if any numerical values are required to solve the question, they will be given in the exam.

There will be no ready-made formula sheets, since preparing a formula sheet on your own is a great way to summarize the material for yourself and organize it in your head! However, you are free to use formula sheets prepared by others if you want; the choice of material to bring to the exam is completely up to you, as long as it's limited to the amount indicated above.

Since you can bring your own material, you do not need to memorize anything. The exam is not meant to test your memory. It will test your level of understanding of the physics concepts you learn in the course, and your ability to apply them correctly and efficiently to concrete problems.

Students are expected to fully comply with Brock University's academic integrity policy. A variety of measures will be taken to detect cases of cheating in both online and in-person exams. If a student is found to have committed academic misconduct, disciplinary measures will be taken. Please see this page for more information about academic integrity.

Grading scheme and requirements ^

The total grade for the theoretical portion of the course will be calculated as follows:

  • The quiz grades will be averaged, and the average will be worth 60% of the total grade. If you miss any quizzes for legitimate reasons, they will not be taken into account when calculating the average. However, if you do not have a legitimate reason to miss a quiz, it will count as a zero in the average calculation.
  • The final exam will be worth 40% of the total grade.
  • The weighted average of the quizzes and final exam will be rounded to the nearest integer, with 0.5 rounded up.

For 1P22 students, this will be 100% of their final course grade. However, for 1P92 students, this will only be 80% of their final course grade, with the other 20% based on the average of their laboratory grades.

As for all courses at Brock, the final grade (after taking into account all of the above) must be 50% or more in order to pass the course. In addition, students taking PHYS 1P92 must get at least a 60% average on the laboratory portion of the course. Completing all labs and submitting all written lab reports is required. Those who fail these requirements will only receive credit for PHYS 1P22.

Exam preparation ^

The best way to prepare for the quizzes and the final exam is to:

  • Attend all of the lectures and actively participate in them. I give ample time for students to ask questions in my lectures, so if anything at all is unclear, you should feel free to ask me about it. The classroom is a safe space, and there are no bad questions!
  • Thoroughly read and understand the relevant sections of the textbook. If there is anything you do not understand in the textbook, please feel free to ask about it during the lectures, post about it on Teams, and/or discuss it with your classmates.
  • Each week, solve the homework assignments and as many as possible of the textbook end-of-chapter problems corresponding to the sections learned that week. Post your solutions on Teams for other students to see, and discuss the questions with other students and with the professor on Teams. If you encounter any issues, post about them on Teams.
  • Practice writing complete analytical derivations of any quantities you need to calculate in a question. "Analytical" means all variables must remain undetermined, i.e. just letters, without putting any numbers into any of them. In the quizzes and final exam you will be required to provide such derivations, so make sure to practice this as much as possible.

Accommodations ^

Brock University is committed to fostering an inclusive and supportive environment for all students and will adhere to the Human Rights principles that ensure respect for dignity, individualized accommodation, inclusion, and full participation. The University provides a wide range of resources to assist students, as follows:

  • If you need any accommodations related to exams, such as extra time, because of a disability or an ongoing health or mental health condition, please contact Student Accessibility Services (SAS) at askSAS@brocku.ca or (905) 688-5550 ext. 3240 as soon as possible to arrange your accommodations.
  • If you require academic accommodation on religious grounds, you should make a formal written request to the professor during the first two weeks of the term, or as soon as possible after a need for accommodation is known to exist. Religious accommodations are not granted automatically, and will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
  • If you are experiencing mental health concerns, contact the Student Wellness and Accessibility Centre. Good2Talk is a service specifically for post-secondary students, available 24/7, 365 days a year, and provides anonymous assistance: visit the website or call 1 866 925-5454. For information on wellness, coping, and resiliency, click here.
  • If you have been affected by sexual violence, the Human Rights & Equity Office offers support, information, reasonable accommodations, and resources through the Sexual Violence Support & Education Coordinator. For information on sexual violence, visit Brock's Sexual Assault and Harassment Policy or contact the Sexual Violence Support & Response Coordinator at humanrights@brocku.ca or (905) 688-5550 ext. 4387.
  • If you have experienced discrimination or harassment on any of the above grounds, including racial, gender or other forms of discrimination, contact the Human Rights and Equity Office at humanrights@brocku.ca.

Use of artificial intelligence ^

The technology currently marketed as artificial intelligence (AI) is not actually "intelligent". Chatbots and virtual assistants such as ChatGPT, Copilot, Google Gemini, and Meta AI, as well as services such as Google's "AI overview", should not be used as study resources in this or any other course.

These services are based on a type of machine learning model called a large language model (LLM). In simplified terms, an LLM model is trained an a specific dataset, usually extracted from the Internet, and can then be used to generate similar data.

When you ask a chatbot a question, it doesn't actually "know" the answer in any meaningful way; it simply uses mathematical modeling to predict the most likely next word, and keeps doing that until it forms an answer.

Nowhere in this process is the answer generated by the model being checked for factual accuracy. This leads to an effect called "hallucination", where LLMs commonly generate false or even misleading information, but present it as fact. This can sometimes be obvious, but it is more likely to be subtle, for example a key incorrect sentence hiding inside an otherwise correct answer.

Another issue with LLMs is that they cannot do math. This is because they are trained to understand language, not math. If you ask an LLM any kind of question involving non-trivial math, it will almost certainly give you an incorrect answer. This makes LLMs a very unreliable resource for fields such as math, physics, and astronomy.

Since LLMs often produce incorrect information, students are very strongly advised NOT to use any AI chatbots or services when studying for this course. Please use only reliable scientific sources such as Wikipedia or published textbooks and research articles written by humans. If you use LLMs, you are very likely to get incorrect information that will decrease your chances of succeeding in this course.

Intellectual property notice ^

Any and all course materials created by the instructor in this course, including but not limited to notes, slides, homework problems, homework solutions, exams, exam solutions, and photo, audio, and/or video recordings, are the intellectual property of the instructor.

Any student who, without the instructor's express consent, publicly posts or sells the instructor's work, or takes a photo, audio, and/or video recording of the instructor's lectures, will be charged with misconduct under the university's Academic Integrity Policy and/or Code of Conduct, and may also face adverse legal consequences for infringement of intellectual property rights.

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