29 November 2016

Two students came into my office hours this week. One of them needed help with problems involving fluid dynamics. I was easily able to help her with the homework she was having trouble with. The other came in to ask about simple harmonic motion, and I was able to steer him in the right direction to solve the problems he needed help with.

Week of 11/21

Not surprisingly, there was no one at my Monday office hours. Class was cancelled for break and there was an exam the week before.

Week of 11/14

I only had a few people at office hours this week. As usual, they were the same people that usually come to office hours and I helped them with homework. I worked with another TA there to help answer some questions, which is very helpful since we don't get to see the homework ahead of time. Different TAs have helped with different problems so we can work together.

Week 14

This week, as I sit in my empty office hours, I only helped one student. This student was struggling with a homework problem and although we struggled through it together, she eventually got the right answer. After initially getting the right answer, we then sat down and talked about how we got there. She seemed to have a good grasp on what was going on.

Journal (Week 11/29)

There was just an exam given out the Monday of Thanksgiving break so I did not expect too many people to be in office hours, and as per usual I only had two people come by and ask any questions. The girl who first came by needed help with a homework problem involving finding the distance from a light source and slit to the screen. Is was a pretty difficult problem because you had to combine two equations together that you wouldn't immediately realize would give you the variable you were looking for. It took me awhile to figure it out, but sometimes talking it out with the student actually helps you to understand everything involved as well. I am no expert on the topics being covered, but between my ideas for the problem and her ideas it was beneficial for the both of us. The other student who came in just needed a quick theory overview of constructive and destructive interference before his recitation quiz.

With finals week about to be upon us, I really think next weeks office hours will have many more students show up. The average on the last exam was higher than the previous two, and according to the professor a handful of students dropped the course after exam number two, so those still in it probably have solid study habits already, but everyone can use a refresher sometimes. Whatever happens, happens though, and I will be ready to answer any questions thrown at me to the best of my abilities. One more set of office hours left, we will see how it goes!

week 14

I had three students come to my hours this week. We worked through homework on fluid dynamics. They did not spend a long time in class on this subject, so they were quite confused. I was able to answer their questions and help them to figure out the homework problems.

week 13

I did not have office hours this week because I was not in Pittsburgh due to a funeral.

week 12

This week I had two students come to my office hours. We worked on homework problems. They had gotten most of the work done, I expect in anticipation for break. I basically only cleared up a couple of ambiguities in calculations.

week 11

This was the week of the second exam. I had one student come to my office hours for a bit of review.

Week of 11/21-11/25

I did not hold tutoring hours this past week as mine are normally on Wednesday and Thursday.

Week of 11/14

I had two students come into my office hours this week. One student had trouble with a change in linear momentum problem from the back of the textbook. The problem dealt with a ball bouncing on a flat, horizontal surface. The student had trouble visualizing changes in velocity, and I informed him that velocity in the x-direction doesn't change, whereas velocity in the y-direction has the same magnitude, but opposite signs.

Another student had a question about two objects inelastically colliding and then sliding up a ramp. I helped this student by demonstrating that an inelastic collision means the objects will hold together, so their velocity will be one and their masses will be combined. Then the problem could be thought of as a standard potential energy problem where all of the kinetic energy from the "single" object will be converted up the ramp into potential energy.

I had no students come to my office hours the week of 11/21 due to break.

Week of 11/7

I had one student come into my office hours this week. She had a question about an example from the previous week's Powerpoint slides regarding power and friction. I helped simplify the problem by pointing out that the goal of the problem is to only find the work of friction as a block slid down a ramp, and this is the component going in the same direction as the slope of the ramp. After we found the normal component of the weight of the block, she was able to apply the power equation to help her solve the problem.

Week of 11/21

On Monday, I worked with another TA to help a student with a challenging multi-step problem involving thermodynamics. I had no office hours on Friday due to the holiday.

November 24th

The number of students that saw me this week really declined. It is most likely because they did checked out before break. I really have to make sure I review the material over break so that I can be ready to answer any questions the students have before their final in a couple weeks.

Week of September 21

This week is Thanksgiving, so I only have my office hours on tuesday. Once again no one showed up this week. Most likely because everyone is home/leaving for break.

Weeks 10-12 (10/31 - 11/18)

Hey everyone,

I forgot to make a blog post for the past couple weeks but not much has changed since my last post. Unfortunately, less people are coming to office hours now. Only my regulars show up, and a couple of them actually withdrew from the class after the second exam. I think the number of withdrawals is likely the reason I am seeing less people come to office hours; it's a shame, but it was probably the right decision, at least for the couple that talked to me about it in office hours.

Aside from the bad news, the students that are still coming to office hours seem to be doing fairly well. I can see that they are starting to build up a general knowledge of physics (for example, they are becoming more likely to know how to attack a problem, or at least set it up and try some different methods out).

I'm hoping the students that do seek my help can finish out the semester strong when we come back from Thanksgiving break.

-Mike

Week of November 14

This week I had a couple of students on Monday with questions before their exam. I answered mostly conceptual questions they had and clarified equations.

On Wednesday I only had one of my usual students and listened to feedback about the exam. I helped the students on their online homework questions about springs and starting simple harmonic motion. After working through some problems, they seemed to grasp the concepts better.

Week of November 14th

I had one student come in on Friday. They had one homework question which was related to torque. The student had some difficulty understanding that the force must be applied perpendicular to the object. Another important point was choosing the pivot point given which information was provided. However, the student was able to write the sum of the equations once we got through these problems. 

Week of November 14th

This week was another typical week during my office hours. No students ended up coming to my Tuesday office hours. During my Thursday hours however, a few students came in during the two hour session. Most of the students came in for help on their concept quiz. This was not too surprising since the topic was waves and the concepts can be rather abstract and unintuitive. I was able to help them by putting the concepts into terms that were a bit more simple than the lecture notes. This seemed to allow them to complete the concept quiz on their own and gave them a bit more of an understanding of wave mechanics.

Week of 11/14

I had one student come to my office hours this week. She needed help with a problem that relied on the law of conservation of angular momentum. She was able to solve her homework problem once she knew to use that law.

Journal (Week 11/15)

This week, like the past couple, there was only one student who dropped by for help. He needed a quick refresher on ray diagrams for both lenses and mirrors, and to talk about the theory behind Snell's Law before his recitation quiz. It was a good session and I think he ultimately walked away with a solid grasp on the concepts. I was surprised by the lack of students who came though because typically before an exam there at least 3-5 people who come talk about things. The topics covered on this exam are a bit easier than the past couple though so we will chalk it up to that for the lack of students in the past weeks.

I have let the students know that my hours will be canceled this coming week since I will be headed home for Thanksgiving, but I assume that since they have an exam on Monday and no one has come in the past weeks that I will not be missed too much. But, like I told them, I am always checking my emails so if something really needs to be clarified then they can always reach me that way. For now, it is time for a much needed break.

Week of 11/14

I helped 3-4 students on Monday, who all were looking to review concepts before their exam. The problems we looked at covered many topics, but many had trouble with rotational kinematics.

On Friday, no students came.

Week of 11/14-11/18

This past week I had a couple of people come in with questions about pressure. I was able to help most of them out by manipulating and re-arranging equations however there was a problem where an aluminum can went from sea level to under the sea and I could not figure it out. I thought that it might have something to do with overcoming the buoyant force but I never did figure it out. The rest of the problems that students needed help with, I was able to walk them through and explain the concepts behind getting the correct answers.

November 17th

This past week students were preparing for their exams so I was understandably very busy. The material that the students learned in this unit was, in my opinion, the most difficult in the course. I had to prepare extra hard to make sure I could fully explain the concepts to the students

Week of 11/14

This week I only had my tuesday office hours, and no one came.

Week of 11/7-11/11

During this week I helped students out with problems relating to conservation of momentum, spring constants, conservation of energy, and torque. I was able to assist the students on the conservation of energy and conservation of momentum problems with relative ease however there was a spring problem dealing with simple harmonic motion that I had a bit of trouble with. For the most part, the students that came in had trouble getting started but could then work through a problem once they were using the correct concept.

Week of Nov 7

Barely anyone came to office hours this week. Two people came Friday for homework help but no one else besides that. I also helped a few people over the weekend right before the exam. Also, sorry this is late.

15 November 2016

No students came to my office hours today.

Week of 11/7

I had no students come to my office hours this week.

Week of November 7

This week I had two students in my Monday office hours who had questions on the difficult book problems. Most of them were conceptual questions and after explaining them, the students seemed to understand them better. They dealt with center of gravity and rotation mostly.

On Wednesday I had my usual students plus two new students with questions on the online homework problems. The problems are getting more difficult now and the students seem to have a lot more confusion on them. Looking back on when I took Physics 1, I struggled with rotational movement a lot. After explaining relationships between linear and angular movement, it seemed to clear some questions up. I wish them luck on their exams this week!

Week of November 7th

This week was very quiet in my office hours. I had one student come into my Tuesday office hours, mainly to get some conceptual help with rotational momentum and rolling to complete the homework due the next day. My Thursday office hours consisted of a few students coming in who just wanted to try the next homework on their own and ask questions if they ran into trouble. The next homework was on simple harmonic motion, so I ended up explaining a few things about the analysis of sinusoidal motion and how it relates to springs. For the most part, the students seemed to pick up simple harmonic motion pretty quickly and were able to do the following weeks homework with relative ease.

Week of 11/7

This week I had one student on Thursday and one on Friday. On Thursday, I helped the student with check your understanding questions about moment of inertia and rotational vs. linear movement. It was important to discuss how to switch between angular and linear acceleration. One of the best ways to do this was to use the equations. On Friday, the questions were about homework. The questions were largely related to torque. It was important to explain how to balance the forces based on where they chose to place the fulcrum. Another concept that I had to explain was that for torque the force that is perpendicular to the lever arm must be used. It was also easier to explain torque by drawing a free body diagram. 

Journal (Week 11/8)

This week they are continuing to learn optics, which is personally my favorite topic of the course. As per usual, I only had a couple students stop in for help, all of which wanted to go over ray diagrams. These diagrams are pretty straight forward and I think they are one of those things where at first you have no clue what is going on and it looks like black magic, but then once someone really sits down with you and shows you how they work it just clicks. I know that is how they were for me, and it appeared to be the same case for these students as well. I gave them some tips, made a list of steps on how to approach such problems, and directed them to the text book for a really well organized table that describes each scenario that could possibly happen.

My only issue is with the pre-lab quiz that one student came in with. The quiz grouped mirrors and lenses together, and used the terms interchangeably, but this is not correct at all. Mirrors and lenses behave quite differently and I think this student's main issue was trying to figure out which one they actually wanted him to use. Besides that single question, though, I think everyone left with a better grasp of the optics thus far. I really do enjoy this section of the semester so I am hoping more people come in and ask for help.

Week of 11/7

I helped no students this week, which was surprising since their next exam is on Monday/Tuesday. I anticipate more people next Monday.

8 November 2016

No students came to my office hours this week.

Week of 10/31

This week the students worked with rotational kinematics and torque. This is my strongest concept in physics 1 so I easily helped the students who came into my office hours. On Friday I stayed an extra hour or so because a student was really struggling until I fully explained all the concepts to her.

Week 10

This week a lot of students showed up to office hours as their homework proved to be challenging even for me. Most of the time was spent doing this homework.

Nick Pelosi
Dr. Broccio Phys 0110

Week 9

This week only 1 student showed up. This was normal as the students had just had an exam. Questions involved clearing up concepts on class material.

Nick Pelosi
Dr. Broccio Phys 0110

Week 8

This week I had 4 students come to office hours. We mainly talked about homework problems as the students had an exam coming up.

Nick Pelosi
Dr. Broccio Phys 0110

Week of November 7th

This week I had one girl come to my office hours. We worked on some of the extra homework problems from the book. She seemed to know what she was doing, but just had some problems with torque. Specifically, her problem was finding the perpendicular distance.

Week of 10/31-11/4

This past week was some of the toughest homework I have ever come across for a physics 1 class. Many of the UTAs, including myself, had trouble with the homework for the MWF flipped class. The most missed problems were the ones dealing with a ladder contacting the floor and a wall at an angle, as well as a few spring problems. For the spring problems, conservation of energy was not working and therefore many of the UTAs were getting stuck. However I was able to help with the TuesThurs homework with relative ease, using concepts of torque, inertia, and angular acceleration to solve for problems.

Recently

The past few weeks I have been helping one student in particular who faithfully attends the office hours. We've also met outside of that time to work on things prior to her exam.

Week of 10/31

Not many people came to office hours this week.  Most people came on Friday for homework help. The homework this week seemed pretty hard and everyone was having problems with it. Students are nervous about the exam

Week of 10/31/16

Last week I had a few people come in with questions about the homework. A few of the questions were quite difficult and I left my office hours without them having finished their homework. The students stayed for the next set of hours so I think they ended up getting the help they seeked out. For the most part the students seemed to understand how to utilize equations, the questions were just very ambiguously worded.

Week of 10/31

This week I only had one student on Friday. She had questions on the homework. It seems like students still do not have good understanding of momentum and impulse. The student had problems understanding the idea of conservation of momentum. One way that I explained it was to say that it was similar to the idea of conservation of energy. This was also helpful because we were able to discuss the differences between inelastic and elastic collisions. In addition, the moment of inertia was a concept that I had difficulty explaining in a conceptual manner. The fact that there are different equations for different shapes confused the student. 

Week of 10/31

I had no one come to my office hours this week though I did help a student outside of my office hours. She needed help with a torque equilibrium problem, mainly how to set it up and why.

Week of October 31st

This week was pretty normal in my office hours. During my Tuesday office hours no students came. On Thursday I had a few students come in and ask me about a certain problem involving two lady bugs and a stick that was particularly challenging. This problem explored the ideas of equilibrium torques and summing different moments of inertia. I think the students ran into the most trouble in their raw calculations of this problem. Since there was a lot of math involved, it was easy for them to miss a negative somewhere or something of that nature so their answer was incorrect. To combat this, I was able to supervise the calculations of each student to double check them while they went through the problem. The students who visited my office hour on Thursday seemed to conceptually grasp rotational motion, but they would benefit from a few more practice problems.

Journal (Week 11/1)

This week in my office hours I only had a single student come in for help. She needed help with a homework problem that her physics tutor could not seem to get correct. It dealt with the doppler effect and I must admit, I got it wrong the first couple times as well. It turned out to be one of those problems that is way easier than you previous thought, and just by reading the problem with a little more detail allowed us to finally figure out the issue. Note to self: radar guns use two distance, so divide your answer by two! What matters is that we figured it out and she left with a better understanding of how to go about doing a problem of that sort, which is 99.9% likely to be on the upcoming exam.

They are starting to learn about mirrors and vision now, which I personally find the most interesting, so hopefully some more students will come visit me in office hours in these next couple chapters. I think the information is relatively straightforward though, so perhaps they won't need my help. Like always, we will see come next Tuesday.

Week of 10/31

I had a regular student come in on Monday, and I worked together with another TA to help her understand some book problems (since no one else was there).

On Friday, no students came in.

Week 10

This week I had the same student as I did last week. We worked on more conservation of energy and some applications of this. We also worked through some homework problems that he had trouble with and I was able to help clear up some confusion. He has a good grasp on the concepts but sometimes gets stuck on the actual algebra or calculations.

Week of Oct 31

On Monday I had no students in my office hours. On Wednesday, I had my usual students come in with questions about angular motion and torque. I showed them how linear and angular movement were similar and pulled up a comparison on the kinematics equations vs. angular equations. This helped them understand that both concepts were very similar, its just that angular velocity has different variables. I also helped them on their questions about torque as this was just introduced to them the day before. At the end of my office hours, they seemed to understand all of the concepts better and finished their homework for the week.

Week 6-9

Week 6

No students came this week, it was the week after the exam so I'm guessing many did not have physics on their mind.

Week 7

One student came in. Her foundation was pretty strong and unlike previous students who just came in for homework help, she came in for help with the more difficult textbook problems. After helping her with those I feel as a student she will perform quite strongly in the next exam.

Week 8

No one came to office hours this week as well, I am curious if my office hours are at a bad time, since the other UTA is also only averaging 1-2 students a week.

Week 9

I couldn't hold my wednesday office hours due to an interview, however a student emailed me for help and I met up with him in the library to help with homework problems.

Week of October 31

This week I had three girls stop by my office hours at different times all asking the same questions. They were working on the homework due this week and were having problems understanding the torque equation. It was mostly the perpendicular distance part that was throwing people off. There were also some problems with angular momentum and understanding how changes in the radius can change the angular momentum.

Week of November 24th

I had no students come to my office hours this week.

Broccio
TuTh 2:30-3:45PM

Weeks 6-9 (10/3 - 10/28)

Hey everyone,

Apparently I just forgot about the blog for the entire month of October (oops!) but I'll try to sum it all up here:

Following exam one, I began to see a large increase in students coming to my hours once the new material for the second exam began to get more challenging. I think this is typical for most UTA's, and this is just because there are students who thought they had prepared enough for the exam, but were unpleasantly surprised at their inability to apply physics to new problems they have not yet seen. This is why physics is often a tough subject for people; anyone can understand a given problem if they work on it long enough, but the real key is being able to solve problems using your overall knowledge of physics. I think most students become a deer in the headlights at this moment, so we need to better prepare them for this by helping them develop a system to solve problems that can be applied to any problem they encounter, whether it be on an exam or in their recitation.

Another problem I continue to see with students is that they don't want to draw a picture of the problem or write down the initial information provided in the problem. Instead, they attempt to solve the problem in their head as best they can, which is a terrible strategy. Yes, they can often get the right answer to part or even all of the problem, but they are not actually practicing their problem solving skills this way, which is what physics is all about. I think we need to continue to stress the importance of drawing a diagram and writing out their work, and hopefully it will eventually stick with them.

Finally, I've noticed that a good amount of the students that regularly come to my hours actually performed better on the second exam than they did on the first, even though the average for the class was lower. This is a sign that we do have a positive impact on the student's learning experience, and that we shouldn't give up on any student willing to seek out our help.

Keep up the good work everyone!
-Mike

1 November 2016

No students came to my office hours today.

Week of 10/24

I had no students attend my office hours