Physics 218 is a calculus-based course in classical mechanics. The Honors sections use a significantly different approach to teaching this material than that used in the regular sections.

The text for the course is Understanding Physics, a new text that integrates much that has been learned over the past decades about how students learn physics most effectively.

The laboratory and recitations of the course utilize Visual Physics, a new curriculum that utilizes highly visual experiments in the lab and cooperative learning group techniques in recitation.

The course integrates instruction in Technical Writing, given in weekly evening lectures, for which the laboratory reports constitute the writing assignments.

Some assignments in both homework and lab reports will graded using Calibrated Peer Review, a procedure in which the students actually grade one anothers' assignments using a structured rubric.

It is vital that you read the Course Syllabus immediately after the first lecture. It will explain a the above features, which are unique to the Honors sections of the course. These features may require more effort from you in the beginning, but we hope and expect that you will learn a lot more from the course. Enjoy!

Practice exam #1 is an example exam for the first 4 weeks of the course. You can use it to prepare for the first exam. You can also access the solutions to this practice exam. Also, on the WebCT site you will find another practice quiz #1 for the same purpose.

You can also review the problems and solutions for Exam 1, and for Exam 3