EDIT: I probably cannot stress enough that I mean this week.
Just under half of you have scheduled your oral exam so far. If you haven't requested a time yet, you should do it soon ... Here are the times left:
Wed: 2:30-4pm, 5-6:30ish pm
Thurs: pretty well tied up in an all-day meeting.
Fri: 10-10:45, 12:30-1:45, 4-5, 5:30-6, after 6:30 if you really want to
It will not take more than 15-20min for the oral exam. You can use your book for reference (though if you thumb through it too long I may look askance at you). The topics are, by section in the book,
22.2 Electric fields
22.4-7 fields of various charge distributions
22.9 dipoles in electric fields
23.4 Gauss' law
23.7-9 Gauss in various situations
Nothing we'll cover tomorrow (Wed) is on the exam, and nothing from our lab sessions. Additionally, simplified versions of HW problems are fair game. And I do mean simplified - there won't be any complicated integrals to work out. Mainly, you will have to set up the problems and demonstrate to me that you know what you're doing more than actually doing all the calculations in detail. For example, setting up the integral to find the field of a line charge, but not having to perform the integral.
I will have a set of 8-10 problems, all of essentially equal difficulty, and each of you will have to demonstrate knowledge of two of them for me. If you get really stuck at any point, I'll help you along in the problem (though at the cost of a few points).
I'm fairly certain most (all?) of you have not had an oral exam before, but it will be relatively painless, and most of you will do very well. If you understand the material so far and the homework solutions, you'll be fine. Don't get lost in mathematical detail when studying, focus on what is going on in the problems and how to set them up.
Just under half of you have scheduled your oral exam so far. If you haven't requested a time yet, you should do it soon ... Here are the times left:
Wed: 2:30-4pm, 5-6:30ish pm
Thurs: pretty well tied up in an all-day meeting.
Fri: 10-10:45, 12:30-1:45, 4-5, 5:30-6, after 6:30 if you really want to
It will not take more than 15-20min for the oral exam. You can use your book for reference (though if you thumb through it too long I may look askance at you). The topics are, by section in the book,
22.2 Electric fields
22.4-7 fields of various charge distributions
22.9 dipoles in electric fields
23.4 Gauss' law
23.7-9 Gauss in various situations
Nothing we'll cover tomorrow (Wed) is on the exam, and nothing from our lab sessions. Additionally, simplified versions of HW problems are fair game. And I do mean simplified - there won't be any complicated integrals to work out. Mainly, you will have to set up the problems and demonstrate to me that you know what you're doing more than actually doing all the calculations in detail. For example, setting up the integral to find the field of a line charge, but not having to perform the integral.
I will have a set of 8-10 problems, all of essentially equal difficulty, and each of you will have to demonstrate knowledge of two of them for me. If you get really stuck at any point, I'll help you along in the problem (though at the cost of a few points).
I'm fairly certain most (all?) of you have not had an oral exam before, but it will be relatively painless, and most of you will do very well. If you understand the material so far and the homework solutions, you'll be fine. Don't get lost in mathematical detail when studying, focus on what is going on in the problems and how to set them up.
No comments:
Post a Comment