You will be using MasteringPhysics software for 2 types of assignments in PHY138: Pre-Class Quizzes and Problem Sets. These are discussed in more detail below.
This document discusses the software in general, and also provides information on how it is implemented for the course.
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The information below is required for setting up your MasteringPhysics account.
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Keep your MasteringPhysics login
and password secret! Remember what they are or keep them somewhere safe and secure. A good password is one that you will never forget and your best friend can not guess. |
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The Introduction to MasteringPhysics assignment does not count for marks but provides important information on using the software: we strongly recommend that you go through it first. It should take about 30 minutes.
The Pre-Class Quizzes and Problem Sets being delivered to you with this software will help you to learn the content of PHY138, which means that they will help you to do well on the Tests and Final Exam for the course. We count them for a small fraction of your total mark in the course to help motivate you to actually do them. If you do not do them yourself you will not receive the benefit, and will do less well on the Tests and Final Exam.
We promise that some of the problems from the Problem Sets will appear on the Tests and Final Exam, either verbatim or slightly modified.
As mentioned, we use this software for 2 different things:
Almost every week both of these types will be assigned. For both of them:
Imagine you are taking a course on Shakespeare. The course is discussing the play Hamlet. However you have not yet read or seen the play. In class the professor asks:
"But why didn't Hamlet obey the ghosts, and thus save seven of the eight lives?"
You, of course, have no idea what she is talking about. What ghosts? What lives? Why only seven?
The point is that it is important to read the material that will be discussed in class before that discussion. And this is as true in PHY138 as it is for a course on Shakespeare.
However students are very busy people, and many need extra motivation to do the readings before the class. The Pre-Class Quizzes are intended to provide this motivation
Each Pre-Class Quiz must be completed by 10 AM on Monday, and covers the textbook material that will be discussed in class for that week. You should read the relevant sections of the textbook before beginning a quiz. Provided you have done this reading, each quiz should take only a few minutes and should be very easy to do well on.
You are allowed one attempt for each answer.
Each question counts equally towards your final mark on the Quiz. Each Quiz counts equally towards your final mark in the course.
In Physics, doing problems is vital for your learning. The Problem Sets delivered with MasteringPhysics provide a nice environment for this aspect of your education.
Each Problem Set must be completed by 11:59PM on Friday, and covers the material discussed in class that week. You should have studied the material of the problem set before attempting the Problem Set.
Students typically take about at hour or so to complete each Problem Set, although some people take longer.
The number of points each question of a Problem Set is worth is based on the estimated time to complete it.
You are allowed 4 attempts for each answer. Syntax errors in mathematical
expressions are not counted as an attempt, provided the software recognises
it as such. As discussed in the next section, the software allows you to preview
your answer using the 
button:
we advise you to always use this feature before actually submitting your answer.
If you successfully solve a Problem Set without using any of the Hints you will receive a bonus of 3%.
Don't be misled by the fact that the problems are delivered via a browser: you should carefully solve all problems on a piece of paper. You should use the same Problem Solving strategy that is discussed in the textbook and is used for every example done in class. You may find your paper work useful later when studying for a Test or the Final Exam.
This section discusses how to use the software. First we show an example problem, and then briefly discuss the Assignment List, which provides access to all released assignments.
As mentioned above, we strongly recommend that you do the Introduction to MasteringPhysics, which provides an excellent introduction to using the software. We will use a screen shot of part of that Introduction to discuss some of the features. The figure is how this question appears when it is shown for the first time.
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We will discuss the meaning of the buttons. Not all problems will have all of these buttons.
| Button | Meaning |
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Displays information about entering mathematical expressions. |
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Submit your answer. |
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Give hints about the problem. |
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Show the answers that you have given to the question. In this example this button is not active because no questions have been answered yet. |
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This is for when you are totally stuck. In this example since you have not yet tried to use the Hints the button is not active. Depending on how the question has been set up, this may show the correct answer. |
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Review all the hints and tutorials that are available. This button becomes active after you have either submitted your final answer or exceeded the number of attempts that are allowed for the question. |
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When you have entered a mathematical expression in the answer field using MasteringPhysics notation, this button will display the answer in traditional mathematical form in a separate window. Below we give an example of using this button. |
A couple of more remarks about the 
button
are appropriate. The software has hints for many questions, and also includes
tutorials on the underlying physics. These can be extremely valuable for later
review. They can be viewed after you have completed work on a question.
Finally, MasteringPhysics is pretty smart, and can almost always help you out when you are stuck. It can also do a lot of the calculations for you. For example, imagine that you are given following problem.
| The (x,y) coordinates of a vector are (3,4). What is the magnitude of the vector? |
Hopefully, it is obvious to you that the answer is 5, and you can of course give this correct answer in the answer field. You can also make the software do the calculation by entering the following into the answer field and also get full credit.
| sqrt( 3^2 + 4^2) |
| If you use the button
with the above in the answer field, the screen shot to the right shows
the separate window that appears. When you click on the
software will compute the value of the expression and submit the result
as your answer. |
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The Assignment List displays all assignments that have been released. All released assignments will continue to appear in the list until after the Final Exam in the course, although you may not work on an assignment after its due date has passed.
| The displayed assignments are sorted by the due date. You can toggle whether the sort is ascending or descending by clicking on the arrow at the top of the 2nd column, labeled Date Due. The top of the column with the 2 different arrow icons are shown to the right. |
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Although we urge you to do the Introduction to MasteringPhysics assignment as soon as possible, its due date has been set to after the Final Exam in the course. Thus it will appear either first or last in the Assignment List depending on how you have chosen to sort the assignments.
Although MasteringPhysics is well-written software, problems with it may occur. These may be bugs in the software or a problem with the way you are trying to use it. Report any problems to the coordinator, Dr. Savaria, by clicking here. Please include as much information as possible about the problem, including the operating system, the browser, etc. Note that sending us an email like the following will not be useful to us:
There was a problem with MP, please fix it.
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If you are using the software with a
computer to which other people have access, be sure to log out when you
are finished. |
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MasteringPhysics is based on the MyCyberTutor program that was originally developed by David E. Pritchard and others at M.I.T. Previous PHY138 students have overwhelmingly rated this software as being very valuable for their learning of Physics.
