PH 203 - General Physics

5 Credit(s)

Algebra/trig-based General Physics sequence for science majors. Concepts include electricity, magnetism, and selected topics from modern physics. Emphasizes conceptual understanding, mathematical representations, problem solving, applications and science skills. Lab included.

Prerequisite: PH 202  with grade of ‘C-’ or better.
Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this course, the student should be able to:

1. Understand charge and analyze situations in terms of how charge moves.

2. Understand and apply Coulomb’s Law to situations using FBDs and Newton’s 2nd Law.

3. Understand, construct and evaluate energy bar charts for situations involving static electricity.

4. Understand and apply electric fields and voltage fields to analyze situations.

5. Understand and apply the concepts of voltage, current resistance and power in electrical circuits.

6. Analyze circuits in terms of series and parallel connections.

7. Understand and apply Kirchoff’s Laws.

8. Understand magnetic fields and how they are created.

9. Determine magnetic fields using Ampere’s Law for special cases.

10. Understand and apply the Lorentz force law for moving charges and currents.

11. Understand and apply Faraday’s Law and Lenz’s Law to physical situations.

12. Understand and explain the origins of Faraday’s Law.

13. Understand Einstein’s postulates and the reasons for proposing them.

14. Analyze situations using Einstein’s postulates.

15. Understand and apply the concepts of time dilation and length contraction.

16. Understand, construct and evaluate spacetime diagrams from different frames of reference.

17. Understand and apply Einstein’s energy and momentum equations.

18. Understand and explain sources of fields from different reference frames.

19. Understand the historical origins of Quantum Mechanics.

20. Apply ideas of wave mechanics to simple situations.

21. Choose coordinate systems and determine components of vectors.

22. Extract information from representations.

23. Construct new representations from given ones.

24. Translate from one representation to another.

25. Evaluate consistency of representations and modify appropriately.

26. Consider different systems, coordinate systems, reference frames and methods of analysis to arrive at a solution.

27. Evaluate units in an equation.

28. Perform dimensional analysis on an unfamiliar system.

29. Identify assumptions.

30. Evaluate special cases for solving and checking problems.

31. Use solutions to make predictions.

32. Check solutions based on units, reasonable fit to the question.

33. Use multiple representations to determine solutions.

34. Use proportional reasoning to solve problems.

35. Design and conduct an observational experiment. 

36. Propose hypotheses for the observations.

37. Design and conduct a testing experiment.

38. Identify the hypotheses to be tested.

39. Design a reliable experiment that tests the hypothesis.

40. Distinguish between a hypothesis and a prediction.

41. Make a reasonable prediction based on a hypothesis.

42. Identify the assumptions made in making the prediction.

43. Determine specific ways in which assumptions might affect the prediction.

44. Decide whether the prediction and the outcome agree/disagree.

45. *Make a reasonable judgment about the hypothesis.

46. *Revise hypotheses when necessary.

47. Design and conduct an application experiment.

48. Identify the problem to be solved.

49. Design a reliable experiment that solves the problem.

50. Use available equipment to make measurements.

51. Make judgments about the results of the experiment.

52. Evaluate the results by means of an independent method.

53. Identify the shortcomings in an experimental design and suggest specific improvements.

54. Choose a productive mathematical procedure for solving the experimental problem.

55. Identify assumptions made in using the mathematical procedure.

56. Identify relevant assumptions.

57. Determine specific ways in which assumptions might affect the results

58. Propose and evaluate potential experiments.

59. Evaluate assumptions in an experimental set up.

60. Identify and estimate measurement errors in an experiment.