Exam II details

Exam II, as it turns out, is coming up next week - Tuesday, 8 April 2008.

This exam will have no multiple choice questions, it will be entirely problem-based. You will be presented with 8 problems, of which you can choose to solve any 6. You may attempt all 8 problems, but will be graded only on the six that you choose. The topics covered will be magnetism through lenses, thus the following:

• Magnetism
• Induction
• ac Circuits and EM Waves
• Reflection and Refraction
• Mirrors
• Lenses

Additionally, it is likely that there will be one bonus question, worth some to-be-determined fraction of a full question.

Now, consider this: there are six topics, and eight questions. Probability dictates that I will have on average 0.75 questions per topic. Out of your six chosen questions, you are thus likely to encounter 4.5 of the six topics, depending on your choices. Playing the odds, then, one would expect that at least one of the topics above could be safely neglected in preparing for the exam without issue, provided one knew the other five topics sufficiently well.

In other words, you may be better off knowing five of these things very well than six things not so well.

Like last time, you may bring in two sides of an 8.5x11 inch sheet of paper (one sheet front & back, or two sheets front only) with anything you like on them. Those sheet(s) plus a writing implement and calculator are all that you may bring. The exam will take place during the normal class time in the normal place. After answering your last-minute questions, you will have 90 minutes for the exam (though I expect it to take only 60 minutes on average).

More details will follow during the week. Your safest bet is to study the quiz and homework solutions, as well as the example problems in the notes - the exam questions will be easier than the homework (by far), but harder than the quizzes. The solutions to homeworks 8 and 9 will be out by Thursday.