Fall 2025
Email is the best way to contact me. Many questions and issues can be solved over email.
I will be in my office
| Monday | 9:00–10:00 |
| Tuesday | 11:00–12:00 |
| Tuesday | 1:00– 2:00 |
| Wednesday | 9:00–10:00 |
| Friday | 9:00–10:00 |
during the course of the Fall 2025 semester.
If you need to meet at a different time, please send me an email to set that up. You can drop by my office any time to see if I am there. If I’m there, we can chat.
Corresponding laboratory for PHY 103. Experiments cover kinematics, forces, momentum, torque, oscillations, waves, sound, and thermodynamics, as well as the use of computers for collecting and analyzing data. PHY 103L must be taken concurrently with PHY 103, the lecture portion; together, they constitute a single 4 credit course. PHY 103L contains 3 contact hours of instruction per week.
Upon completion of this course, students will be able to
Health request: if you have cold, flu, or COVID symptoms, please wear a mask.
Attendance will be taken at the beginning of each lab session. If a student does not attend/complete a lab, a grade of zero will be given for that lab assignment.
Please submit your lab assignment to me before leaving the lab. Each student must complete and hand in their own assignment.
At the end of the semester, a single average lab grade will be sent to your lecture instructor to be included in the calculation of your final grade based on the weight determined by that instructor.
Your grade on a lab assignment is not an indication of how much I like you. It is not an indication of your worth as a person. It is not even a measure of your ability to do experimental physics. It is my judgment of the care, attention, and thought put into the lab assignment, as reflected in your written responses to the questions and activities in the assignment. Such care, attention, and thought results in learning.
For the lab, a violation of the Academic Honesty Policy includes, but is not limited to, copying answers from another group/individual without performing the experiment and analyzing the results yourself.
You may work with a lab partner and take data together. In that case, the data for you and your partner will be identical. You may copy this data. You may discuss the questions with your partner and decide how to answer them. Even so, you may not copy the answer your partner has written. Your answers must be in your words.
Labs can only be made up in the event of serious circumstances such as illness. There is no extra credit for the lab.
| Week of | Lab Activity |
|---|---|
| 08/25 | Intro to Lab/Uncertainty/Graphing |
| 09/01 | Free Fall: Acceleration due to Gravity |
| 09/08 | Force Table/Vectors |
| 09/15 | Projectile Motion |
| 09/22 | Friction |
| 09/29 | Centripetal Force: Uniform Circular Motion |
| 10/06 | No Lab (Fall break) |
| 10/13 | Ballistic Pendulum |
| 10/20 | Torque |
| 10/27 | Hooke’s Law: Simple Harmonic Motion |
| 11/03 | Transverse Waves |
| 11/10 | Speed of Sound |
| 11/17 | Thermal Expansion |
| 11/24 | No Lab (Thanksgiving break) |
| 12/01 | Specific Heat |
PHY 103 satisfies the Natural Science (NS) Analysis area of the Disciplinary Competencies requirement of the General Education program. The learning outcomes for NS courses are:
PHY 103 also satisfies the Quantitative Reasoning (QR) area of the Literacy requirement of this General Education program as well as the QR requirement of Constellation LVC. The learning outcomes for QR courses are:
| General Education NS Learning Goal | Course Objective | Assessment |
| Upon completion of this course, students will be able to: | ||
| Inquiry: Pose questions and identify appropriate empirical methodologies to gather evidence to evaluate theories or hypotheses. | make measurements and collect data using various pieces of equipment and apparatuses | Lab handouts |
| use their knowledge of fundamental areas of physics, like kinematics, forces, momentum, torque, oscillations, waves, sound, and thermodynamics, to understand and interpret experimental results | Lab handouts | |
| Analysis: Synthesize and organize evidence to identify important patterns. | organize data into a format that is easily accessible for further analysis | Lab handouts |
| quantitatively analyze data through calculations and graphs | Lab handouts | |
| Critical Thinking: Evaluate the strengths or limitations of evidence before accepting or formulating a conclusion. | understand sources of experimental error, assumptions used, and other limits of the analysis | Lab handouts |
| Communication: Clearly express the results of the interpretation, representation, application, and analysis of scientific information in an effective format. | present experimental results in a coherent, well-organized manner | Lab handouts |
| General Education and Constellation QR Learning Goal | Course Objective | Assessment |
| Upon completion of this course, students will be able to: | ||
| Interpretation: Demonstrate ability to utilize mathematical forms (e.g., equations, graphs, diagrams, tables, words), including the ability to learn about and interpret unfamiliar quantitative structures | use their knowledge of fundamental areas of physics, like kinematics, forces, momentum, torque, oscillations, waves, sound, and thermodynamics, to understand and interpret experimental results | Lab handouts |
| Representation: Convert relevant information into various mathematical forms (e.g., equations, graphs, diagrams, tables, words) | make measurements and collect data using various pieces of equipment and apparatuses | Lab handouts |
| organize data into a format that is easily accessible for further analysis | Lab handouts | |
| Application and Analysis: Make judgments and draw appropriate conclusions based on the quantitative analysis of data, while recognizing the assumptions used and other limits of the analysis. | quantitatively analyze data through calculations and graphs | Lab handouts |
| understand sources of experimental error, assumptions used, and other limits of the analysis | Lab handouts | |
| Communication: Clearly express the results of the interpretation, representation, application, and analysis of quantitative information in an effective format | present experimental results in a coherent, well-organized manner | Lab handouts |
Any student who submits work that is in violation of the academic honesty policy will be subject to the penalties described in the College Catalog and outlined in LVC’s Academic Honesty Policy. Lebanon Valley College expects its students to uphold the principles of academic honesty. Violations of these principles will not be tolerated. Students shall neither hinder nor unfairly assist the efforts of other students to complete their work. All individual work that a student produces and submits as a course assignment must be the student’s own.
Cheating and plagiarism are violations of the academic honesty policy. Cheating is an act that deceives or defrauds. It includes, but is not limited to, looking at another’s exam or quiz, using unauthorized materials during an exam or quiz, providing unauthorized material or assistance to another student, colluding on assignments without the permission or knowledge of the instructor, and furnishing false information to receive special consideration, such as postponement of an exam, essay, quiz, or deadline of an oral presentation; and fabricating evidence, sources, or source material. Plagiarism is the act of submitting as one’s own the work (e.g., the words, ideas, images, compositions, or other intellectual property) of another without accurate attribution. Plagiarism can manifest itself in various ways: it can arise from sloppy, inaccurate note- taking; it can emerge as the incomplete or incompetent citation of resources; it can take the form of presenting passages or work prepared by another as one’s own, whether from an online, oral, or printed source. It may also take the form of re-using one’s own previously submitted work (such as a paper written for a different class) without the current instructor’s knowledge and permission.
A student is culpable for violations of the academic honesty policy, as outlined above, when caused by either academic negligence or academic dishonesty. An act of academic negligence is when a student engages in behaviors outlined above through irresponsible ignorance or carelessness. Acts of dishonesty involve the intent to deceive or mislead. Initially, the instructor will make the determination that a violation of the policy may have occurred.Students who take part in violations as described above are subject to a meeting with an Associate Provost, who has the authority to take further action, up to and including expulsion from the College.
Students should be aware that the work they submit must be their own. Professors may create assignments or activities that require or encourage the use of AI. If such use is not either required or allowed explicitly, then students must assume that the use of artificial intelligence is *not* acceptable in any given assignment. In this instance, unacknowledged uses of artificial intelligence in student work can be deemed violations of our academic honesty policy (see above). If this is unclear in any way, it is the student’s responsibility to ask the professor about appropriate uses of AI for the assignment.
Audio and/or video recordings of the class sessions may be made by the College and/or by students who have been authorized by the LVC Center for Accessibility Resources to record classes as an accommodation for a disability. By participating in the class, all students consent to be recorded for these purposes. Any other recordings of class sessions are not permitted. Students participating in online courses are asked to respect the privacy of those participating in the class by ensuring that class sessions cannot be overheard by those who are not enrolled in the course.
College-wide course policies concerning the following topics can be found at https://lvc4.sharepoint.com/sites/LVCSyllabusPolicies.
It is the student’s responsibility to review these policies.