Engineering Physics I  PHY 200

About the Textbook

Calculus-Based Physics Volume I

Description:  

This calculus-based kinematics textbook is terse but quite easy to read. There are ample mathematically-minded lemmas, and figures for students to be able to visualize the material. The author designed it to be an excellent choice as the starting point textbook for a new teacher to use the first time that new teacher teaches a calculus-based physics course. With experience, the teacher could customize the book to take better advantage of the teacher’s own strengths and the academic background of the students enrolling in the teacher’s course. The author also provides a few videos, "chalk-talks", formula sheets, and problem sets with solutions.

Author:

• Jeffrey W. Schnick - Saint Anselm College

Formats:  

The book is available as a PDF, and Microsoft Word document.

Supplemental resources: 

Additional resources such as math handouts and resources also available here.

Cost savings:  

I used Replacing University Physics, by Hugh D. Young, and Roger A. Freedman, which retails for $275. Since I teach about 70 students each year, this is potential annual savings for students of about $19,250.

License:

Calculus-based Physics I is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Generic license. This means you are free to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. You must give, appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. If you remix, transform or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.

About the Course

PHY 200: Engineering Physics I

Description: 

Covered are forces, torques, and static equilibrium; constant, accelerated, and periodic linear and rotational dynamics; gravity; fluid statics and dynamics; elasticity; temperature, thermal expansion, and heat transfer. 

GE credit: 3 Units

Prerequisites: Math 210, PHY 200L (corequisites)

Learning objectives: 

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to: 

• Apply the scientific method and apply scientific reasoning to problems in Physics.
• Solve quantitative physics problems and demonstrate reasoning clearly and completely. Integrate multiple ideas in the problem-solving process.
• Describe, explain and model static and dynamic physical systems in order to explain the behavior of real-world situations. 

Teaching and learning impacts:

Collaborate more with other faculty:No
Use wider range of teaching materials:Yes
Student learning improved: Unsure
Student retention improved: Unsure
Any unexpected results: No

Use wider range of teaching materials - Because I was not able to use images or simulations from the publisher, I needed to find open-source images and simulations or make my own.

Sample assignment and syllabus: 

Sample Assignment
This is an assignment I used for Fall 2015.

Sample Syllabus
This is the syllabus I used for Fall 2015.

Textbook Adoption

OER Adoption Process

The main motivation for adopting this textbook was to save the students money, and also instead of having them spend money purchasing a textbook, have them purchase an online HW service subscription instead. Incidentally, the online HW subscription (Sapling Learning) also included an online textbook that certain students found very helpful. 

I adopted this textbook because I found it to be both mathematically rigorous and readable.

Student access:

Students access the textbook either by PDF or Word.

Nelson Coates, Ph.D. 

I am a Physics professor at California State University Maritime. I teach Engineering Physics I, and II, and their associated labs, as well as a Physics for Future Leaders Course.

I am passionate about empowering students through mentorship and inquiry-based teaching. Recent pedagogical research shows that inquiry-based instruction or modeling instruction is a particularly effective approach for teaching science at the secondary level. With these modes of instruction, students learn the curriculum by engaging their curiosity, and following self-directed lines of inquiry to collect data and develop models of the physical world. The “eureka” moments of scientific discovery that are enabled by these modes of instruction become part of a student’s self-created story of the world and are carried with them into their lives and future careers.

My primary research interests are in studying the correlations between electrical, thermal, and optical properties of solution-processed semiconductors. Solution-processed semiconductors (for example conjugated polymers or inorganic nanocrystals) are a class of materials where the ability to combine materials with diverse properties and control the self-assembly of nanoscale features in cast semiconductor films provides an enormous range of control over material properties. The vast tunability of solution-processed semiconductor properties can lead to improved devices for a number of applications such as low-cost and flexible photovoltaics, thermoelectrics, LEDs, and nuclear radiation detectors