Organization

 

Help!

Most students find the material in this course challenging.  Don't expect to attend a lecture, and then immediately be able to apply the topics that were discussed.  The lectures are just meant to show you what you need to know - working through the assignments, with help, if necessary, is the best way to actually learn the material and to see how to apply it.   Expect to make use of all the resources available to you - the online notes, sections, Faculty office hours, TA office hours, and individual tutoring.

You should aim to get 100% on every homework assignment.  If you don't know how to do something, or aren't sure that you've done a problem correctly - ask, and we'll help you.  We expect to be helping you a lot! The homework, and even projects, are meant to be a learning aid, not a means to assess your understanding of the material. 

At the same time, don't expect that simply doing homework assignments and getting them all right will guarantee a good grade. Your exam performance will also be important. If you tend to do homeworks in a group and rely heavily on help, you may find it helpful to do additional book problems and practice exams to get to the point where you can work through problems on your own.

That being said, try not to worry too much about your grade - grades in freshman classes don't get looked at very much, and after you've been working for a few years nobody asks about your college grades any more. Even the details of the material you learn in class are soon forgotten. The most important thing you learn in engineering classes is how to solve a hard problem in an area that you don't know much about. Or, if you are headed for management, how to get other people to solve a hard problem that you know absolutely nothing about....

 

Faculty contact information:

 

Graduate TA contact information:

 

 

Senior Undergrad TA contact information:

 

 

Textbooks and Reference Material:

There is no required text for this course: the main reference will be the online notes.  However, you may find it helpful to buy a textbook to provide a source of additional practice problems, as well as another perspective on the course content.

There are huge numbers of textbooks on dynamics. The available offerings differ in style, although their content is very similar.  The book that will work best for you is usually a matter of preference. A few suggestions are given below. 

• Nelson, Best, McLean and Potter, 'Engineering Mechanics: Dynamics' Schaum's outlines McGraw Hill 2010 Really cheap, short, with lots of (rather easy) problems.  We will suggest (optional, ungraded) practice problems from this book.  Amazon link>>

• Hibbeler Engineering Mechanics: Dynamics, 12th edition, Prentice Hall. Amazon link>> 

• Bedford and Fowler Dynamics  Amazon link>>

• Beer (you wish...) Johnston et al Dynamics Amazon Link>>

• Riley and Sturges Dynamics Amazon Link>>

• Meriam and Kraige 'Engineering Mechanics: Dynamics:' This was been  used as the required text for EN40 for a number of years. It was never particularly popular, but it does contain a good set of challenging problems (much harder than the Schaum's outlines ones).  A limited number of free copies of the 5th edition of this text are available for loan on a first-come, first-served basis.  See Prof Bower if you want one...

It is not necessary to buy the latest edition of these books - Newton's laws haven't changed appreciably in the last few  years.  You will also find that some of the textbooks don't contain much in the way of realistic engineering applications in their problem sets.  They will help you to understand the basic principles, but perhaps not to apply them to practice.

 

Class Schedule and Room Assignments:

Main Lectures:  9am-10:20am Tues/Thurs room 166 Barus-Holley Building

Sections: Meet on Mon and Wed, and occasionally on Fri at the following times:

• 9-9:50 Room 155 Barus-Holley (Bower)

• 10-10:20 Watson CIT 227 (Powers/Bower)

• 11-11:50 Barus-Holley 153 Powers

• 1-1:50 Barus-Holley 157 Franck/Powers

• 2-2:50 Barus-Holley 157 Franck

Faculty office hours:

TA office hours: (will start week beginning Jan 30)

 TA office hours will be held in room 096 (Freshperson lab, basement of B&H) 7pm-10pm Mon and 5pm-10pm Tu/W/Th. TAs are scheduled as follows

• Mon 7pm-10pm Alejandro Rivera

• Tues 5pm-8pm Kelly Jin

• Tues 8pm-10pm Nik Osvalds
  

• Wed 5pm-8pm Tim Dingman

• Wed 7pm-10pm Amanda Kautz

• Thurs 5pm-8pm Nick Ragosta

• Thurs 6pm-8pm Jennet Toyjanova

• Thurs 8pm-9pm Nik Osvalds

• Thurs 8pm-10pm Eyal Bar-Kochva

Office hrs may be moved to the instructional computer facility on weeks with MATLAB assignments.

 

Tutoring:

Any of the grad TAs are available for 1-on-1 tutoring by arrangement.   Email one of the TAs to set up an appointment (see near the top of this page for contact info)

Grading Policy

Your final score in the course will be determined using the following algorithm

• Homework: 20%
• Midterm Exam: 10%
• Final Examination: 20%
• Design Projects: 10% each

• Lecture attendance 10%.  We will not take attendance in the first 3 lectures (to allow for shopping period) and you can miss 3 lectures (in emergency) without penalty.  Additional missed lectures will not be excused for any reason.  Attendance will not be monitored in sections, but of course we hope to see you there...

Grades are assigned based on the distribution of total course grades.  There is no magic score corresponding to an A. Generally, 30% or so of the class will get an A grade.  Note that exam grades have a much larger standard deviation than grades on homework, projects, and attendance.  Consequently,  exams have a bigger effect on grades than the relatively small 20% contribution to the total score suggests.

Regrettably in a class of this size it is not feasible for us to assign special projects to make up for missed homework, project work, or poor performance on examinations 

We will follow the tenets of the Academic Honor Code of Brown University.  Honor code violations may result in loss of credit for the assignment involved, loss of credit for the course, or additional penalties as determined by the academic disciplinary committee. We can't  risk graduating engineers who are unethical: they might end up killing someone! 

 

Submitting work and collecting graded assignments

Homework assignments and project work should be submitted to Stephanie Gesualdi at the first workstation on the North side of the 7th floor of the Barus-Holley building

Graded assignments may be collected from the boxes opposite her workstation.

 

Grade change requests

If you find that your grades have been added incorrectly, or you would like a grade on your homework, examination or laboratory assignment reconsidered, you should

• Prepare a brief written statement explaining why you think your grade is incorrect;
• Leave your written request, together with the homework/lab/exam in question in the box marked `grade change requests' across from Ms. Gesualdi's desk on the 7th north floor of Barus-Holley.
• We will keep the assignment until final grades are being determined, and if your final grade is close enough to a grade borderline for the change to have any effect the assignment will be re-graded.

Please bear in mind that your assignments are graded by a large number of long-suffering undergrad TAs, graduate TAs and faculty.  It is impossible to guarantee  consistency between grading of different graders - instead, we try to make sure that your assignments are cycled through the various graders.

Also note that each entire HW set amounts to about 2% of your final grade, and hence each problem amounts to less than 0.3% of your final grade, and each point of each problem about 0.03% of your final grade. It's not worth worrying about a few points here and there!

 

Collaboration Policy

Homeworks: You may work on homework problems as a group.  However, any work submitted for grading must represent work done by the person who will receive credit for the assignment.  It is not acceptable for two students to submit identical copies of a homework problem.  It is not acceptable for one student to copy work previously done by another.   COPYING MATLAB PROGRAMS IS FORBIDDEN.

Design Projects: Collaboration is required on group design projects.  It is important for all team members to bear an equal share of the work involved in the project.  You will be asked to assign a grade to each of your team mates in the project, based in part on their level of contribution to the project.  Part of the grade for the project will be based on team evaluations. 

Examinations: No collaboration of any kind is permitted on examinations. Duh!