PHYC10004: Physics 2: Physical Science & Technology

10 Weekly Online Homework (15%), 8 Lab Practical (each with an online prelab) (25%), 3-hour Final Exam (60%)

Around the start of the semester, you can purchase a handbook and a lab book for $12 and $10, respectively. The digital copy of the handbook is available on the LMS so it is not necessary to buy the handbook. If you a leftover lab book e.g. from Physics 1, you can reuse it for this subject. Otherwise, it is compulsory to buy the lab book for $10.

Lectures
The first half of the semester involved Chris covering the topic of Electromagnetism (including the four Maxwell Equations). Chris was a light-hearted lecturer. He tried to make the lecture entertaining while encouraging the audience to participate in answering questions on the slides. In my opinion, his lecturing style was suited for students who are new to the topic to get them interested. The drawback to this was that Chris tended to make the lecture content much easier than it was in the exam.

The second half of the semester involved Elisabetta covering the topic of Fluids, Thermal, and Modern Physics (although particularly in this sem Prof. Geoffrey Taylor served as a replacement lecturer for the Fluids part for one week). Compared to Chris, Elisabetta was a much more serious lecturer and it'd be best to not generate any noise/distraction during her lecture. She'd pause whenever this happened which perhaps may be reasonable but certainly tensed up the lecture atmosphere.

The issue I see in the lectures was that we were mostly taught the theories and would rarely solve any problem. In fact, a lot of these theories weren't actually examinable, especially the Modern Physics part (in the exam we were just expected to use sophisticated formulas and plug in the unknowns). This issue was expected to be resolved by doing the tutesheet and the online homework, but I still think that they were insufficient. I guess this is where the textbook shines as stated by Hancock.

Tutorials / Problem Solving
We sit in groups of 3-4 and then attempt to solve the tute sheet problems in our groups. There was also a tutor who would supervise the progress of our discussions and help answer our questions. A more detailed solution would be posted on the LMS at the end of the week.

One thing I could appreciate of this subject was there were standby tutors in the Laby Ideas Centre every weekday from 11am-3pm, so it wasn't difficult to get help.

Lab Practical
Before each lab session, we needed to finish the Online Pre-Lab questions. The questions were usually quite easy and straightforward but some can be tricky.

At the start of the lab, a demonstrator would brief about the experiment and gave possibly some warnings or tips. We then got into our lab partners (whom we were free to choose) and started doing our experiment. We were required to take down our observations, publish results (mostly using excel), and give analysis and discussion in our lab book, which would be graded by our demonstrator.

This is honestly my most hated aspect of this subject. Since most of the practical marks are based on our lab book, I personally felt that the whole purpose of doing the experiment was to compose a well-written report rather than doing the experiment itself. It was common to see students rushing to finish their report before 2.5 hours have passed, and it was just painfully hectic.

Another annoying part was that the marking of our report was subjective to our demonstrator. There were times when I think I wrote really well but got lower than I expected. I found it hard to improve my report as my demonstrator barely bother to give any comment/feedback. There was one time where I get to have my report checked in front of my demonstrator and I was told my report was incomplete, only to realise that he/she forgot to read the last page of my report (which may explain why I got lower than I expected?) .-.

Online Homework
The weekly online homework consists of more or less 10 questions which we were to input the final number and the corresponding units for each question part (although sometimes it can be multiple choice). We were provided with 3 tries to obtain the correct answer along with a hint which if used would set the maximum score attainable for that question to be 80%, although I felt that the hints were most of the time blatant and not really helpful. It's worth noting that the questions were all taken from the exercise questions from the prescribed textbook (with the numbers altered, but the question wording is preserved) and were generally harder than the exam questions.

Final Exam
There were a lot of past papers provided and the School of Physics was generous enough to provide us with the solutions. These past papers were very valuable for the final exam because many questions were recycled, if not reused. They also served as an indicator of what may not be examinable. Having done really well in Physics 1 and observing the question styles on the past papers, I was confident that I could ace the final exam, but oh boy how wrong I was.

This year they decided to dramatically increase the final exam's difficulty level. They added several questions that were very unconventional relative to the past papers' questions, and many of us were just speechless. One example was that in the past papers, there were usually questions asking about R (resistor + emf) circuit analysis and perhaps questions about capacitors, both are very straightforward. This year they combined both topics into one big question where we were to analyse an RC (resistor + capacitor + emf) circuit + a switch. Many of us were just hoping that our exam mark would be scaled up. (I myself skipped around 15% worth of the exam lol) Update: They did!

Conclusion
In my opinion, this subject was harder than Physics 1 and involved a lot of calculus, especially in the Electromagnetism part. I was particularly disappointed with us having to use Maxwell's Equations without having to know how to use Vector Calculus properly, and how most of the Modern Physics questions were just using formulas and plugging in the unknowns.

As I've stated, I definitely loathed the practicals in this subject, and it's primarily why I gave this subject a low rating. The things commendable about this subject were probably the availability for help through the standby tutors and the abundance of final exam papers and solutions.

Due to the long contact hours as well as online homework and prelab every week, I don't recommend taking this subject if you don't have to unless you have a strong interest in the topics in this subject.

Yes, with screen capture, but lecture demonstrations are usually not recorded

Prof. Christopher Chantler (Week 1 - Week 6), Prof. Elisabetta Barberio (Week 7 - Week 12)

Yes, Final Exam 2008-2018 along with the solutions.

2 out of 5

The prescribed textbook is Halliday & Resnick, Fundamentals of Physics, 11th ed., Wiley 2018, which we were recommended to buy in the subject's LMS FAQ. I personally didn't buy any textbook, but one of my mates who had it didn't find it very useful and instead recommended Physics for Scientists and Engineers.

For each week: 3x 1-hour lecture, 1x 1-hour tutorial, 1x 3-hour lab (although we needed to be dismissed after 2.5 hours)

2019 Sem 2

H1 (90)

25% Practical/Lab Work, 15% Homework Tasks, 60% Final Exam

So, Physics 2. This is where you'll basically see a cohort of 70% engineering majors, 5% Mathematic majors and 20% Physics majors. Don't get me wrong, I found this class incredibly interesting and enjoyable. However, the lectures lacked information that was found (and needed) in the book, and the labs, like all first year Physics labs, weren't integrated into the lecturer curriculum well.

The course begins with basic electromagnetism, beginning with Coulomb's Law and beginning Maxwell's equations for Electromag in Lecture 2. Gauss's law is covered through the concept of an electric field from various charge distributions, including but not limited to: spheres, infinite rods, infinite planes, point charges and disks. Electrical conductors and the electric potential (better known as voltage) is discussed at length, using calculus to define both.

Electrical device's come up next, where capacitors are looked into detail along with their practical applications. Kirchoff's laws of current and voltage are run through extremely quickly, but that's ok because they are pretty easy. Magnetic fields and how they arise are next, where the Biot-Savant Law and the Lorentz force law will be taught. Pay attention to these because they are necessary. The magnetism portion of the subject completes the 4 Maxwell Equations. REMEMBER THESE EQUATIONS OFF BY HEART. The will be used to derive many expressions in exams and tutorials. They are also pretty neat.

As a general note for the Electromagnetism portion of the course. This course uses surprising large amount of calculus for modelling. I know that mathematics is the language of Physics, but a lot of students, including myself, was not expecting this. Line integrals and setting up integrals for Gauss's law and the Biot-Savant Law are extremely common. Finding the electric field due to a charge distribution is elementary compared to finding the voltage (electric potential) parallel to a rod at a distance r from each differential charge dq of the rod (this uses summation/integration).

This is the reason I advocate buying the book. The book covers the calculus behind the physics extremely well, with many examples that are too long for the lecture to include. I whole-heartedly believe that this book taught me extremely well in terms of how to tackle each problem and what the relevant physics and mathematics to use were.

After the electromag portion of the subject, there is 1.5 weeks of Fluids and Thermodynamics. This doesn't really get covered in depth, however, it would be good if you could read the chapters in the book as the assessed material was harder than the lecture material indicated.

The quantum portion of this subject isn't taught very well. I'd like to say that it has nothing to do with the lecturer, but it does. And it's not because the lecturer was bad, it is because the material is just weird to explain for 1st year undergraduates (I believe) (IE: WTF is an infinite potential well of energy?). Many equations will be rehashed from Year 12, however, in a tad more detail. Once again, this is where the textbook shines as it explains all of the topics in much more detail and provides a much better understanding for future classes and the exam. Buy it, and study all the chapters. I still have this book and I'm proud that I could finish all of it through two Physics courses at UoM.

All in all, a very good subject that has interesting topics. However, it could be taught more throughly. This is mediated by the purchase of the prescribed text book.

With the book: 4.75/5Without the book: 3.5/5

Yes

Roger Rassoll for Quantum Physics (Part 2) and some other guys that escape me for Electromag (Part 1).

Yes, ~4 for PHYC10004 specifically. Look up Physics B for more (dating back to 1999). They are essentially the same subject.

3.5-4.75 Out of 5

BUY PHYSICS FOR SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS. YOU'LL THANK ME LATER.

3x1 hour lectures per week, 1x3 hour practical per week (total of 10 practicals, leaving Week 1 and another free), 1 hour "Problem Solving" Class

Semester 2, 2012

H1 (93)