Preliminary Information on Physics Courses
This information is for new students and prospective students:
Reasonably good keyboarding skills are important for this course, since poor skills will add significantly to the time required to complete the work.
Tests are typically administered through by proctors as testing centers of institutions of higher learning. Students in the vicinity of VHCC will test at the VHCC Learning Lab. Students must arrange proctoring and the arrangement must be approved.
The homepage for your course includes an Assignments Grid, within which are links to text assignments, worksheets, Class Notes, lab instructions, and other documents. The Class Notes are build around video links in which the instructor presents information as it was actually presented in class. Copies of the Class Notes with non-working video links are on the website. To access the full Class Notes with videos, the class notes should therefore be run from the DVD's (or a copy of the information on the DVD's) according to instructions you will receive in the Orientation.
Orientation to the Course
The structure of the homepage and the procedures used in the course will initially be unfamiliar to most students. At the beginning of the course you will complete an Orientation designed to familiarize you with procedures, and to help you navigate the homepage for your course. Learning the procedures and navigation take most students 2-3 hours. Once you are 'clued in', you will know where to locate things and what to anticipate. You will soon find that you can easily follow the correct procedures for completing assignments and submitting your work.
TestingTests must be given in a secure testing environment. Students generally either come to our Learning Lab or arrange to take tests in the testing center of a local institution of higher education. We have to approve the testing site, and it is the responsibility of the student to provide the email address of a contact person at the testing site by submitting the Proctor Information Form.
Tests are randomly generated from a large problem bank and posted on the Internet, with a different test every 5 minutes, so you can access actual tests for practice, research the types of problems to expect, etc..
Registration
Our Admissions Office (call 1-276-739-2400 and
ask for Admissions) or web site vhcc2.vhcc.edu
can give you information about registration times and procedures. There will be
no problem with the course being closed and, barring unforeseen circumstances
(e.g. incapacitating illness of instructor or family member) the course
will not be canceled. There have
been no cancellations in these courses during the 10+ years the instructor has
been teaching them.
If you choose to register for the course the system might not recognize your completion of course prerequisites and therefore might not permit you to register. If you do have the prerequisites and wish to register, but are not being allowed to do so by the regular registration system, you should submit the form http://vhcc2.vhcc.edu/dsmith/forms/enrollment_request_form.htm . If your prerequisites are in order the instructor will then forward a request to admissions to have you enrolled.
Labs and Lab Materials
The physics courses require the use of lab materials, which are purchased from the VHCC bookstore.
A few of the experiments are also done using video clips, from which you take the data you will need to complete and report your analysis.
Some labs are designed to use data taken using a computer interface; since interfaces might not be available to all students there is an alternative, as outlined below:
You should check out the information posted at
http://vhcc2.vhcc.edu/dsmith/genInfo/computer_interface_and_probes_cost_etc.htm
under Physics Lab Kit Policy and Estimated Costs. For easy reference an outline of this information is also posted on the Supervised Study Current Semester pages (with which you will become familiar early in the course) under Course Information.
Purchasing Course Materials
The cost of the DVD's is low. DVD's must be purchased through the bookstore (physics students will receive the disks with their lab materials). The number of the VHCC Bookstore is 1-276-739-2504.The text may be purchased through the bookstore or through another source, provided the package is identical to the one sold at the Bookstore (the package may contain access codes to publisher support, CDs and other materials so if you use a different you need to be sure you are getting the right package). Check our Bookstore for prices—they are often competitive with prices from online sources, and shipping costs are reasonable.
Prerequisites and Level of Challenge
You should understand that these courses are very challenging at the A level (our A students need to be able to transfer directly into Virginia Tech's programs, for example), much less so at the C level (we have students who transfer to schools with much lower standards, and of course we serve them too), so you will be able to pretty much pick your level of challenge, depending on the program for which you are preparing and your grade expectations.
The prerequisites for Physics 121-122 are high school Algebra I, Algebra II and Geometry courses, or equivalent.
The prerequisite for General College Physics, Physics 201 and 202, is Precalculus (a high school analysis course or equivalent would suffice).
The prerequisite for University Physics (Physics 241, 242 or 231, 232) is Mth 173 or equivalent for the first-semester course, and Mth 174 or equivalent, plue the first-semester course, for the second-semester course.
Courses of Study
A link to the courses of study for Physics I courses:
Phy 121-122:
Phy 201-202:
Phy 231-232: