The Department of Physics provides discipline-specific offerings for beginning students in physics, the dual degree in physics/engineering and pre engineering

Students who complete the second course in calculus based Physics will be able to apply foundational concepts, particularly in the areas of (1) proofs and derivations, and (2) translation of written problems into mathematical equations.

Students will complete a faculty-developed comprehensive exam in Physics 1411 assessing the common foundational concepts in Physics.

Eighty percent of students completing the exam will score 70% or higher on the comprehensive exam.

This report documents the global gains in pre/post examination performance of 34 students enrolled in Physics 1411 during the Spring of 2015.  It additionally compares the differential gains made by two sub-populations, consisting of 11 students (group A, primarily physics and pre-engineering majors), who had previously completed the new “Physics Bootcamp” (PHYS 1401), and 23 students (group B, about half math with the remainder phys, pre-eng, other) who had not.  The bootcamp functions largely as a quantitative leveling and preparatory agent.

 

Both groups had approximately the same academic age.  Respective classification indices for groups A, B were 2.6, 2.4 (with Freshman = 1, Soph. = 2, etc).

 

Group B was more experienced in formal mathematics, with 1.3 average semesters of calculus completed, as opposed to 0.6  for group A.

 

Group A had a slight advantage (0.7,0.4) with regard to previously completed semesters of physics education, awarding a half point for high-school credit, general science exposure, and incomplete college terms.

 

The exam consisted of 20 multiple choice physics questions appropriate to the study of introductory classical mechanics at the university level.  A quarter point deduction was made for incorrect answers in order to subtract out statistical background noise associated with guessing, and negative values were zeroed out.  Absolute scores were converted to percentile form.  Normalized results will be reported in units of the inclusive (all students) standard deviation of 12 percentile points associated with adjusted scores on the pre-test.

 

Both groups fared poorly, but similarly, on the pre-test of physics concepts, with adjusted normalized scores of 0.6, and 0.9 (0.8 for class overall).

 

Both groups improved similarly, and significantly, in their post-test scores, with normalized marks of 1.8 and 2.3 (2.1 overall), representing a percent improvement of 190%, 150% (160% overall).

 

Conclusions:  All students made significant gains in physics knowledge, but the two sub-populations could not be significantly discriminated in terms of initial or final performance.  Participants in the “Physics Bootcamp” fared comparably to classmates with more formal math training, suggesting that this experience is providing a benefit approximately commensurate to one semester of calculus.  The results presented are preliminary and additional statistical support is required.  No effort has been made to calibrate against standardized college entry scores.

Although the results are enocuraging, the numbers are small.  We will continue to collect more data.

We will continue to collect more data.  The results are encouraging but there are a number of confounding factors and more data is needed to obtain a scientifically meaningful result.

Seniors studying Physics will demonstrate competence to graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Physics

Students preparing to graduate with a BS in Physics will demonstrate comprehension of fundamental principles and the ability to apply these principles in solving problems.

Students will complete a common earlier version of the Graduate Record Subject Exam in Physics related to PHY 4370 (Classical Mechanics ) under GRE standardized conditions.  Faculty will have classified the questions into domains specific to the major principles in this area.

Students will score above the 50th percentile determined as a result of the graduating seniors' scores from the common exam. A raw score of 50% is in the 74th percentile for the Physics GRE with a ¼ penalty for wrong answers.

On the first day of class, 11 students scored an average of 1.7.  On the last day of class, 7 students scored an average of 2.8.

We will continue to study the effect of working harder problems and teaching the students when to use Lagrangian methods.