20121001

Online reading assignment: work

Physics 205A, fall semester 2012
Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo, CA

Students have a weekly online reading assignment (hosted by SurveyMonkey.com), where they answer questions based on reading their textbook, material covered in previous lectures, opinion questions, and/or asking (anonymous) questions or making (anonymous) comments. Full credit is given for completing the online reading assignment before next week's lecture, regardless if whether their answers are correct/incorrect. Selected results/questions/comments are addressed by the instructor at the start of the following lecture.

The following questions were asked on reading textbook chapters and previewing a presentation on work.

Selected/edited responses are given below.

Describe something you found interesting from the assigned textbook reading or presentation preview, and explain why this was personally interesting for you.
"I always think of an occupation when I think of work. However, our textbook describes work as an energy transfer that occurs when a force acts on an object that moves."

"All energy in the world is constant and just changes forms. This is just such a cool concept because to me its just another way that shows we are all connected in this world!"

"Energy conservation to solve problems previously concerning kinematics and Newton's laws. It appears completely unrelated to strategies previously used, yet connections can be made between the methods, especially in their results."

"Energy is always around us, but most of the time in forms that are not useful to us."

"Kinetic energy is proportional to the square of its speed. So a 20% increase in speed is like a 44% increase in kinetic energy. Now I'll be more careful driving."

"Kinetic energy is always positive, but the change in kinetic energy can be negative."
Describe something you found confusing from the assigned textbook reading or presentation preview, and explain why this was personally confusing for you.
"When holding a trunk in the same spot attached to a pulley, that there is no energy being transferred even though it is stabilized it in its secure spot."

"Zero work being done even though force is being exerted."

"How work done could be negative."
Ask the instructor an anonymous question, or make a comment. Selected questions/comments may be discussed in class.
"How does the law of energy conservation really apply, it just seems like an interesting fact but doesn't seem different from Newton's laws." (Conservation of energy will be a much easier method than Newton's laws and kinematics to solve the same type of problems.)

"The reading never truly makes sense to me the first time around. I will have to re-re-read this as I do everything else!" (Well, at least you have already been exposed to the concepts before coming to class.)

"How do the points from labs total a potential 100 points if each lab report is five points and there are less than 20 total?" (In addition to the lab report points, each week there are two points from completing the online pre-lab and post-lab assignments, for a total of 13 labs × 7 points = 91 points, which do not include additional points for early report submission, and challenge activity points.)

"Are we going to get any sort of study guide for the midterm? What chapters will be the main focus of the midterm? How many questions will be on our first exam?"(The study guide for the midterm has already been posted.)

"We're already one-third of the way done with physics!" (Is this a good thing or a bad thing?)

No comments:

Post a Comment