¶ Classes
This series consists of three lab courses:
They are held year around typically with two of the three courses being held at any one time.
The 6Ls are service courses run by the Physics Department for Life Science and Liberal Arts Majors. They cover the laboratory component of the 6 lecture series. ^dff378
- 6A and 6AL focus on Newtonian Mechanics, Kinematics, Energy and Work, Rotation ^6AL-Info
- 6B and 6BL are a mixed bag of Harmonic Motion, Waves, Basic Circuits & Ohms Law and Magnetism
- 6C and 6CL cover more advanced E&M topics such as EM Waves, Ray Optics, Wave Optics and finally gentle introduction into nuclear physics (radiation)
Each course has 300-400 students on average. Typically two courses run per quarter, resulting in 650-750 students in a typical year. Each course will usually have 3-4 TAs who will run sections.
¶ Lab Manuals
The lab manuals can be found at ilg.physics.ucsb.edu
¶ Location
The physics 6L labs are held in T942. That is the south-western most trailer west of the the lecture halls.
¶ Scheduling
Outside of the [[Scheduling History]], the other important information to to know is that we have so many students who need to take the physics 6-Series that we are not able to accommodate them all at once.
To deal with this we run the labs in two week blocks. We break the blocks into two chunks, the first week is called Week A and the second block is called Week B.
¶ Level of Physics
The students taking this course are typically life science, premed, or sometimes chemistry majors. Many of them are not required to take calculus so we will not discuss derivatives, integrals, etc when describing the math behind the physics or deriving equations.
We do often go into trigonometry and use logarithms in these courses but a fair number of students struggle with that level of mathematics. Use caution and be prepared for questions when doing math beyond simple algebra. We typically find that about 50-75% of the students are comfortable with logarithms and their properties. We have heard that many students struggle with basic trigonometry, like solving a right triangle, so we ask the TA's to be extra prepared for handling trig questions with particular labs.
¶ Lab Math
To deal with some of the math struggles we created "Lab Math" or "Math Lab" assignments for the students to do at the start of the quarter. The goal of these assignments are to help the students with some sort of math concept they will need to have handy during the course.
For example, for the last lab in 6CL they needed to fit a line by essentially making a log-log plot for the Nuclear Physics lab. So we created a Beer's law lab math assignment. The math. between the molar absorptivity of a material, and light absorption is nearly identical.
We also created lab math assignments to help students learn how to create a table, work in excel, make a plot, and perform a fit. Or another assignment about how to linearize an equation with logs or square roots. These are a few examples of what we have tried.
We have written different versions of lab math assignments, and touched on different topics. We may have not yet found the ideal form of this but I think the idea is still fairly solid.
¶ Assignment Turn In
There is a bit of a history to how the assignments have been handled in 6-series and other lower division classes. This is a brief summary of what we tried and why we have changed in different ways.
See the [[Assignment Turn In History]]
Our current setup is to have the students use laptops, or borrow a chromebook, to answer the questions to the online assignments and turn in all of their work at the end of the lab section.
¶ Practical Information about the 6Ls
The 6Ls are service courses run by the Physics Department for Life Science and Liberal Arts Majors. They cover the labratory component of the 6 lecture series.
- 6A and 6AL focus on Newtonian Mechanics, Kinematics, Energy and Work, Rotation
- 6B and 6BL are a mixed bag of Harmonic Motion, Waves, Basic Circuits & Ohms Law and Magnetism
- 6C and 6CL cover more advanced E&M topics such as EM Waves, Ray Optics, Wave Optics and finally gentle introduction into nuclear physics (radiation)
Each course has 300-400 students on average. Typically two courses run per quarter, resulting in 650-750 students in a typical year. Each course will usually have 3-4 TAs who will run sections.
¶ Day-to-Day work required to run the 6Ls
The day-to-day work of the 6Ls is fairly straightforward when the University and Department are not in crisis mode.
In this section, we will look at a typical two-week cycle in the 6Ls. For information about pre-quarter set-up, please see the specific notes on each class.
Friday Previous Week - Monday Week A: The labs will be "flipped" prior to the start of the new lab cycle. While we typically employ undergraduates to do this, it is instructive to do the flip with them if you are not familiar with the material.
After the labs are flipped, you will need to hold a TA meeting. This meeting covers a number of important aspects of the lab and is your main opportunitiy to manage the TAs and extract critical information from them (that can be otherwise difficult to get via email). See the TA meeting section for more info.
Monday Week A: An email should be sent out to all students reminding them that the new lab cycle starts this week. A bare template for this email is below. You will likely get multiple emails about clarifications/questions in the hours following this.
Monday Week A - Thursday Week A : The TAs will run labs largely independently. They may contact you for help, which largely falls into the following three categories:
-
Physical/technical issues that require your presence
- Sometimes equipment doesn't work properly or goes missing.
- Usually the TAs are mistaken and they figure it out on their own (e.g. missing piece that they find withing 5 minutes or powersupply not working because they didn't flip the correct switch).
- Other times, they actually do need spare parts, calculator swaps or technical help.
- TAs will often ping for help with getting TVs/projectors to work, updating Gauchospace groups, or getting a page of the manual to load.
-
Student issues that are resolved with policy advice (Most Common)
- Most of the help TAs ask for has to do with student policies. Examples: What to do with late students? What to do with student who's partner doesn't show up? What to do about student who left early?
-
Manual Issues/Questions
- This should be less prevalent as the maunal editting settles down, but TAs will commonly find typos/errors/confusing portions of the manual. Sometimes the errors are bad enough to warrant a live edit of the material.
Do your best to help them. Not every problem has a neat solution, and sometimes giving the TAs the authority to make some decisions on the fly can lessen everyone's work.
Friday Week A: The labs should be in full swing. It is advisable to send a group message on slack/email to your TAs to ask them if there are any major concerns. You need to explicitly check on the TA's grading progress and remind them that everything from the previous Lab needs to be graded by the following Thursday/Friday. The TAs should also fill out their hours worked sheet for the week.
Monday Week B - Thursday Week B : The TAs will run labs largely independently, and they should all be very familiar with the lab by this point. They may contact you for help, though it should be less frequently than the previous week.
You should send an email out to the students around Tuesday/Wednesday reminding them to start on the next Prelab if applicable.
Friday Week B: TAs should finalize their Grading of the previous lab by this day and post their average to Slack. They should also finalize their absence list, complete their hours worked, and check for uncompleted tasks. You may need to hunt down and interrogate some TAs to get confirmation that they are done grading.
¶ TA Meetings
¶ Useful Documents
¶ Templates
¶ Student Templates
¶ Welcome email (students)
Should be sent to students via Peachmail at least one week before start of course. It will need some formatting touch-ups and data filled in when copied to Gauchospace.
Dear students,
¶ Welcome to Winter Quarter and Physics 6BL!
In preparation for the first week of classes, there are some things that you must do. You will not be able to access labs + manuals until you do them.
Student to-do list:
Visit the Physics 6BL GauchoSpace page (https://gauchospace.ucsb.edu/) and review the information there.
- Note that all sections of Physics 6BL will meet in Trailer 942, Room 1020, on the west side of Broida Hall (see map on GauchoSpace).
You must view all of the course policy information to unlock Lab 0.
You do have an online first assignment on GauchoSpace titled Online Math Lab "Lab Math 6BL". Please do that activity and submit it by
[day][date]at[time]on Gauchospace.You will not meet with your TAs during the first
[number of weeks online lab]weeks, but they will hold virtual office hours.
If your Physics 6BL section is listed as meeting in Room "1020A," you are in an "A" section.
- Your lab section will meet in person during the week of
[FirstA Week].- You must submit a prelab on Gauchospace (worth 10% of your lab grade) before meeting in person in order for you to be prepared to do the "The Pendulum" lab.
If your Physics 6BL section is listed as meeting in Room "1020B," you are in a "B" section.
- Your lab section will meet for the first time in person during the week of
[First B Week].- You must submit a prelab on Gauchospace (worth 10% of your lab grade) before meeting in person in order for you to be prepared to do the "The Pendulum" lab.
Have a great quarter!
Sincerely,
Instructional Lab Group
Department of Physics
¶ Lab this week email (students)
Should be sent to students the begining of Week A.
¶ Subject: Lab
[#]Starts today!Dear students,
This is a reminder that Lab
[#]starts todayAs always, some extra info regarding labs.
- Your Prelab is due prior to the start of your section.
- Be sure to arrive to your lab on time. You should shoot to be a few minutes early.
- Please bring your laptop. Lab submission is digital.
- Everyone will work in randomly chosen pairs. You and your partner will submit ONE assignment between the two of you.
- You must submit your assignment by the end of class. Another reason that it is important to do your prelabs!
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out by email or nectir chat (in the manual sidebar)
Sincerely,
Instructional Lab Group
Department of Physics
¶ Missed Multiple Labs Warning
Should be sent to students that have missed multiple labs without documented excuse at the begining of the two seek cycle.
¶ [Urgent: Response Required] Multiple missed labs: Currently at risk to fail course.
Dear Students,
If you are receiving this email, then you have multiple unexcused absences and are on track to fail this course.The attendance policy requires that you have documented, excusable reasons for absences, and that these are communicated to your TA PRIOR to section time. If you have not complied with this policy, it is recommended that you drop the course to avoid receiving a failing grade for the quarter.
UCSB Physics ILG
¶ Mail to TA Templates
¶ Welcome email (TAs)
Should be sent to students at least one week before start of course.
¶ Subject: [Response Requested] Welcome to TAing
[course code]!Dear
[TA Name 1],[TA Name 2],[TA Name 3]
Welcome to TAing Physics 6AL next quarter! Kelly and I will work with you on having a smooth quarter. I know there's still time before the quarter starts, but I wanted to set the section times and TA meeting times.
Section Times. According to the schedule you submitted with your applications, the following section assignments work. Are you OK with this schedule? Please let me know.
[6L_sections_w22.png]
Note: If you haven't TAed the 6L series before, basically a lab runs for two weeks, the first week is called the "A" sections, and the second week is the "B" sections. So A-weeks and B-weeks alternate. So if you are a 50% TA, you hold 3 sections per week, for a total of 6hrs in section.TA meetings. We will be meeting weekly on Monday for from 2-3pm. Our first meeting will be Monday, January 3rd at 2.00pm in the trailer 942. The first week of classes students will have an online lab assignment, so there will be no sections, and students will work on this assignment at home on their own.
The schedule of labs is below:
6AL_shedule_w22.png
I will reach out with more information once the quarter gets close (how to get the key to the trailer, where the trailer is, you will be added to the course Gauchospace soon, etc). Please confirm the section times and TA meeting time. And let me and Kelly know if you have other questions.Looking forward to working together,
[Your Name]
¶ TA Meeting Reminder
Should be sent via email or slack at least one bussiness day prior to the TA meeting.
¶ Subject: [TA Meeting] Reminder: TA meeting for
[course code]on[Day]!Hi All!
As a reminder, we will have a TA meeting on[day]at[time]. Prior to this meeting, please:
- Make sure that you have updated all the relevant info in the attendance and hours worked section of the
[link to master TA Sheet]- Double check your task list and make sure that the tick marks are up to date!
- Make sure that you are up-to-date on grading, or have notified me otherwise.
[additional task]Agenda:
- We will have a short slideshow about the lab and play with some of the setups. The slideshow can be found on the "Other Resources" tab of the the TA Sheet.
- We will go through the TA sheet and discuss the previous week
[optional item 3]- We will reflect on our communication, task tracking and grading tools and discuss improvements and comments
See you all then!
¶ Mail from TA to Student Templates
¶ Standard Online Make-Up Lab
¶ Subject: [Make-Up] PHYS
[course code]Online Make-Up Lab[Lab #]!Dear
[name],In regards to your inability to come to lab, we can schedule a make-up session.
Make-up for this section will be an online lab, similar to Lab 1, to complete by yourself. You will receive a link to the lab on the Week-B Thursday:
[Month][Date]at 7AM. The make-up lab will be due Friday at[Month][Date]11:59 PM. I have CC'd the instructors on this and they are aware that you will be joining the online make-up lab.If there is some documented emergency or medical situation that prevents you from doing the online make-up on this day, reach out directly to the instructor.
¶ Same Day Online Make-Up Lab
¶ Subject: [Make-Up] PHYS
[course code]Online Make-Up Lab[Lab #]!Dear
[name],In regards to your inability to come to lab, please complete the make up lab:
[link to correct makeuplab]This will be an online lab, similar to Lab 1, to complete by yourself. The make-up lab will be due tomorrow at 11:59 PM. I have CC'd the instructors on this and they are aware that you will be joining the online make-up lab.
If there is some documented emergency or medical situation that prevents you from doing the online make-up by tomorrow, reach out directly to the instructor.