Section 12 -- Mondays -- 2:30-4:25pm -- 541 Davey
Section 9 -- Wednesdays -- 4:40-6:35pm -- 104 Osmond
| Instructor: | Emily Alicea-Muñoz |
| Email: | ealicea@astro.psu.edu |
| Office: | 532C Davey Lab |
| Office Hours: | Tuesdays and Thursdays, 4:00 - 5:30pm All office hours are held in 445 Davey Lab |
| Office Phone: | 814-863-7948 |
| Emily's Class Website: | http://www.astro.psu.edu/users/ealicea/teaching/ |
| Head TA's Website | http://www.astro.psu.edu/headta/ |
Attendance to every lab session is required. The labs depend on in-class demonstrations, and sometimes you will use lab equipment, so if you don't come to class, you can't do the work. If you have a legitimate reason to be absent, then you must let me know in advance, via email, phone, in person, smoke signals, telegraph, or any other method of communication (though the first three might be the most effective, btw).
Legitimate reasons include: a serious illness (I'll probably need to see a doctor's note), Official University Business (I have to see documentation explaining that your absence is required and officially sanctioned), religious obligations, and family emergencies.
Under these legitimate circumstances, you can make up a lab at the end of the semester. If you were absent and you didn't have a legitimate reason, then you can't make up the lab and you get a zero for that lab.
You'll need to get the following things for the class:
Grades will be assigned based on the standard range:
| Score | Grade |
| 93% - 100% | A |
| 90% - 92% | A- |
| 87% - 89% | B+ |
| 83% - 86% | B |
| 80% - 82% | B- |
| 77% - 79% | C+ |
| 70% - 76% | C |
| 60% - 69% | D |
| < 60% | F |
Your grade will consist of 1500 points to be determined by the following:
This is an easy class. I expect that everybody will get a good grade :-)
Lab reports are due one week after we do the lab in class, at the beginning of the lab session. If you finish the report during the class period, then you can hand it in then.
A late report will lose 20 points immediately for being turned in late. Late reports will only be accepted until 6pm on the following day from the due date. This means that Section 12 has until Tuesday at 6pm and Section 9 until Thursday at 6pm to turn in a late report. You may turn in a late report to my office, 532C Davey, or to me in person if you see me around or during office hours. If you leave the lab in my office without giving it to me personally, email me to make sure I got your report. Do not turn in a lab to the Astronomy main office.
You should write clearly in your lab report. If I can't understand what you wrote, I can't grade it.
Sometimes you'll have to solve equations and do some math work as part of the lab report. You should show all your work, because this way I can give you partial credit in case you make an error along the way and get the final answer wrong. I know how annoying it is to get a whole problem marked wrong because of a missed minus sign, so if you show me all your work and I can track down that missed sign, you'll get credit for what you did. Don't just spit out a number and mark it as the final answer without going through the procedure. Also, final answers should have the correct units. If you show your work and your final answer is the correct numerical value but you have no units, I will take points away. An answer of "42" really has no meaning unless you tell me if it's 42 grams, 42 parsecs, 42 Kelvin, 42 centimeters per second, etc. See what I mean? And also, you should put a box around the final answer, and label all equations, diagrams and plots (including a title and axes labels).
You are encouraged to discuss the labs with your classmates, but you should do your own work. The report you turn in must be individual work, not collaborative. Do not let others copy your work and DO NOT CHEAT! [more details about the no-cheating policy below] If you don't understand something, you can ask me during the lab session or during my office hours.
This course follows the Eberly College of Science and Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Academic Integrity Policies. See http://www.science.psu.edu/academic/Integrity/Policy.htm and http://www.astro.psu.edu/deptinfo/integrity.html for more details. What does this mean? DO NOT CHEAT! Don't copy answers, don't plagiarize lab summaries, don't fake observations, etc. Just don't cheat.
NOTE (6/Feb/06) -- If I notice cheating of any kind in a lab report, the cheater(s) will obtain a grade of zero in the lab report, and this grade cannot be eliminated at the end of the semester as the lowest grade in the labs, nor can the lab be made up at the end of the semester. If you cheat twice, then you get an XF in the class, so just don't do it (not even once).
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Section 12
Regular Meetings: 541 Davey
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Section 9
Regular Meetings: 104 Osmond
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Labs labeled with a little star (*) will meet in the computer lab. These are Labs 2, 5, 13 and 14. Notice that the computer lab is in a different place for each section. I'll remind you the week before that we'll be meeting in the computer lab, but please try to be alert and show up in the right place.
On March 6 and 8 there are no labs because it's Spring Break. Go have fun somewhere. I know I will :-)
You may have also noticed that the labs will not be done in the order they are in the manual. This is because all the sections have to work around the schedule of the compuer lab. Please make sure to check the schedule ahead of time, so that you know where we'll be meeting and what lab we'll be doing.
UPDATE (16/Jan/06) -- I didn't know there were no classes on MLK Day (16/January/2006), so I didn't account for that on the Schedule. Therefore, all the Monday labs (Section 12) now have to be moved down one week. For this reason, at the end of the semester there will be no Make-up labs on Mondays. If you are on Section 12 and need to make up a lab, you'll have to come to my Wednesday section or to another TA's make-up section. I'll give more details about this later in the semester.