Welcome Physics Phriends!

How Things Work

Sean Lally
seanplally@gmail.com
412.965.0805
M/W - 326 Smith - 7 PM
tuphysics.blogspot.com
How Things Work, 4th Ed., Louis A. Bloomfield

Good evening physics phriends!  Welcome to a new semester and your new favorite class, "How Things Work," with your humble host, Sean Lally.

I am thrilled to be sharing some of the big ideas of physics with you this term.  We will start the course with me finding out what interests YOU in the wide world of physics.  The course will be structured to meet as many of these topics as possible.

There will be 3 non-cumulative exams, equally weighted.  Exams are generally multiple choice, though it is possible that there *may* be short answer questions, mathematical problems or 1-2 paragraph essays asked as well.

I will assign problem and question sets regularly, but these will not be collected.  Primarily, they are used to help you study material and see what concepts I find to be most valuable (on exams, and in general).  I will give some text references as well, but in general, if it is important I will cover it in class.

I use this blog for my personal notes and to get important information to you.  I tend to use the document projector to work out problems or write essential things.  If it's important stuff, I'll take an image and post it on the blog.  However, don't view this as a substitute for good note-taking.  The blog will have some detail, but also only some skeleton outline of notes.  Sometimes these notes will be up on the blog well in advance of class, and sometimes, well, they won't.

Welcome to "How Things Work"!