Some interesting statistics from the first Physics 111 quiz

Demographics

From information collected in the first quiz the intended major of students in Physics 111 is shown in the table below. The total number of students responding was approximately 130.

Major Number
Business/Accounting & Related
15
Mechanical Engineering 14
Computer Engineering & Related
 12
Pharmacy/Radiography/Sports Medicine 8
Communications
 7
Electrical, Chemical Engineering
6
CIS
5
Civil Engineering
4
Undecided 31

Other majors with four or fewer students included: Psychology, Music Education, Biology, Music History, Philosophy, Anthropology, Education, Justice Administration, Geography, Political Sicence, Physics, English, Political Science, Art.
Clearly we have a diverse populatio !.

University Standing

You were asked for your current standing. As I suspected most of you are freshman.

Rank Number
Freshman 78
Sophomore 32
Junior 10
Senior 7
Other 1

Why are you here ?

I asked why you were enrolled in this course.  As I suspected for most of you this course meets a general education (or other) requirement.  But a significant number of people indicated that they actually made a conscious decision to choose Physics !  I hope you aren't disappointed.

Reason
Number
Requirement
94
Desire
33

My favourite answer was -  "Heard it was easy".  You will have to judge that as individuals.

Famous Physicists

You were asked for the names of 3 famous physicists. The names listed were as follows:

Name Number
Einstein 97
Newton 88
Galileo 15
Archimedes 14
Hawking
 12
Rutherford
 6
Franklin
 5

Others, with 4 or fewer students mentioning their name included:
Oppenheimer, da Vinci, Watt, Planck, M. Curie, Tesla, Boyle, Avagadro, Dalton, Bernoulli, Joule, Penrose, Coulomb, Ohm, Doppler, Kepler, Fermi, Feynman, Mendeleev . Several of these (Avagadro, Dalton, Mendeleev) I would classify as chemists, but there is some room for debate...

In addition Edison, Bell (Alexander Graham), Plato, Aristotle, and Kant were mentioned. Edison and Bell were inventors rather than physicists; Aristotle, Plato, and Kant were philosophers, the profession from which physics developed, but by today's standards not physicists.

Some off the wall suggestions:
Darwin - physicists may be at the top of the evolutionary tree (!), but Darwin was not one of them.
Mendel - Famous for his genes, not his physics.
Nobel - famous, certainly. Invented dynamite and left the legacy of the Nobel Prize, but not a physicist.
Nash - Mathematician "A beautiful mind"
von Braun - presumably Werner von Braun of  rocketry fame
Asimov - Good SF writer, but not a physicist.
Voltaire - French write/philosopher (nothing to do with volts) ?
Bacon - Theologian from the Middle Ages ?
Holst, H. K. Laurence, Brin - Don't know any physicists by these names, but I may be wrong
Dewey Beadle - Physics Teacher at Seneca HS (?). A good guy, but not a famous physicist...
Davis - Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I am far from famous...

Physics Questions

You were asked to state a physics related question you would like this course to address. The responses ranged from the very specific, for example, "What does E=mc2 mean ?", to the very general, "What is Physics ?".
Specifically, according to general topic,

Subject of Question Number
Electricity, Magnetism and Light 41
General Mechanics
 19
What is Physics and what use is it ?
 19
Relativity, Quantum Mechanics 18
Gravity 17
Sound
 5

I will try to address as many of the issues raised as possible. But please remember that although this is an introductory course it is not a conceptual physics course. You will be expected to perform simple calculations related to every topic we cover. Certain subjects, for example, Relativity and Quantum Mechanics do not easily lend themselves to an introductory level course.

Science in the News

I asked you to write down a science topic you had seen recently in the news.  The subjects were much more varied than I had expected, although it was no surprise that Mars, the Moon and NASA came out on top.  

Subject
 Number
Mars, the Moon, NASA
 51
Cloning, genetics, stem cells...
 16
Mad cow disease
10
WMD (nuclear, biological, chemical)
10
Global warming and the environment
7
Miscellaneous health issues
8
Other
11