PHYSICS 4BL
Physics Laboratory for Scientists and Engineers: Electricity and Magnetism
Description: Laboratory, four hours. Enforced requisites: courses 1A or 1AH, 1B or 1BH. Enforced corequisite: course 1C or 1CH. Sound waves and electric circuits, taken by digital oscilloscopes and analyzed by Fourier transformation. Geometrical and physical optics. Conception, execution, and presentation of creative projects involving sound waves or electric circuits. Letter grading.
Units: 2.0
Units: 2.0
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2020 - TLDR: Easy busywork but depends on your group, TA, and helps if you have taken 4AL This class is entirely dependent on your TA and your group. You are placed in a group at the beginning of the year and you stay in it for the whole quarter and are supposed to do all the work together (you pretty much do everything on your own and come together for the unit report and the final project at the end of the quarter). It helps a lot if you have already taken 4AL but I know 2 people in my group hadn't before and only struggled a little bit. There are 4 units, Training (reaction time), sound, circuits, and the final project. the first unit and the beginning of the second unit were copy-paste of the first and second unit of 4AL so it's easy to reuse work and data. The rest of the units are just a lot of busywork up until the final project which can be as fun as you make it (you choose to build something out of the UNO kit). My TA was horrible and my group was smaller than all the others but the work itself isn't very hard. If you need help you can ask your groupmates or go to the TAs office hours (I went once and I was the only person all quarter so if you want help but dont want to hurt your ego it's easy to ask questions alone). If you have problems with your group or TA make sure to change it defore the drop deadline because after almost nothing will change!
Fall 2020 - TLDR: Easy busywork but depends on your group, TA, and helps if you have taken 4AL This class is entirely dependent on your TA and your group. You are placed in a group at the beginning of the year and you stay in it for the whole quarter and are supposed to do all the work together (you pretty much do everything on your own and come together for the unit report and the final project at the end of the quarter). It helps a lot if you have already taken 4AL but I know 2 people in my group hadn't before and only struggled a little bit. There are 4 units, Training (reaction time), sound, circuits, and the final project. the first unit and the beginning of the second unit were copy-paste of the first and second unit of 4AL so it's easy to reuse work and data. The rest of the units are just a lot of busywork up until the final project which can be as fun as you make it (you choose to build something out of the UNO kit). My TA was horrible and my group was smaller than all the others but the work itself isn't very hard. If you need help you can ask your groupmates or go to the TAs office hours (I went once and I was the only person all quarter so if you want help but dont want to hurt your ego it's easy to ask questions alone). If you have problems with your group or TA make sure to change it defore the drop deadline because after almost nothing will change!
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2021 - Lab sessions: He doesn't really come around to check on the groups, so it's a lot of independent work. He's also not that good at explaining concepts. My group was nice though so it was fun working through different labs with them. Lab Reports: Graded fairly harshly and got points taken off for small writing style issues. These seem to be graded on a strict bell distribution. However, from what I heard, this seems to be a departmental standard for this course. Overall: It was generally pretty chill.
Winter 2021 - Lab sessions: He doesn't really come around to check on the groups, so it's a lot of independent work. He's also not that good at explaining concepts. My group was nice though so it was fun working through different labs with them. Lab Reports: Graded fairly harshly and got points taken off for small writing style issues. These seem to be graded on a strict bell distribution. However, from what I heard, this seems to be a departmental standard for this course. Overall: It was generally pretty chill.
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