PHY483F

Relativity Theory I (2020-21) -- PHY483F/1483F

Midterm oral exam guidance

Academic integrity
I expect us all to behave in a trustworthy fashion. All UofT rules about academic integrity must be obeyed. In particular, Before we start your oral midterm exam, I will ask you to swear that you are obeying these rules.
Topic coverage
The midterm will cover material from lecture notes in Chapters 2 to 12 inclusive, and from HW1 and HW2. (The final exam will cover Chapters 13 to 23 inclusive, and HW3 and HW4.)
Allowed aid
The only allowed aid will be an unaltered copy of my lecture notes, digital or printed. (I will not be surveilling you with policeware to enforce this rule. In return for my trust, I ask that you behave honourably and respect the rule, to ensure a level playing field for all students.)
Timing
Your exam will be 25 minutes long and consist of the two of us having a conversation. This might seem like a long time, but it will go faster than you think. (Also: I am not as scary as I might seem. I will make every effort to be kind.) The first 5 minutes of the 25 minutes will be spent on a couple of easy questions to help set you more at ease. Then I will ask a few intermediate level questions for 15 minutes. Harder questions will be reserved for the last 5 minutes only. (Then I will need a 5-minute rest to write notes!)
Type of question
Because this midterm oral exam is so short compared to two-hour written midterms of the past, I will not be able to ask questions requiring significant calculation, or to delve deeply into any one topic. I will instead be more focused on conceptual understanding, and on strategies used in solving problems.
To prepare, you may wish to practice picking key ideas out of lecture notes/HWs at random and for each one, giving a verbal explanation to your computer camera in no more than 2-3 minutes. Remember that you are allowed to consult unaltered lecture notes, sketch, and write equations as well as talk.
Grading scheme
I will be focusing on evaluating how well you understand key concepts and how clearly you can explain things. I will not be grading you on how confident you appear to be, or on how perfectly you speak English.
Technology
Your exam will be held as a private meeting on Zoom. Please ensure that you have a suitable place to sit where you can talk freely and which has reasonable wi-fi bandwidth. Please test out your planned hardware setup with a friend ahead of time, to reduce the likelihood of tech problems.
Please ensure that you have a way of writing equations or drawing a sketch and showing me. For example, you might have an iPad or a Wacom external USB tablet connected to your desktop/laptop and share your screen. Or you might draw on ordinary paper and steadily hold what you wrote up to your webcam so that I can read it clearly. If you are not sure whether your planned setup is sufficient for showing equations / sketches, please test it out with a friend in advance.
If you don't have a webcam for your laptop or desktop, but you do have a smartphone, there are free apps you can download which let you use your smartphone as a webcam. One is called DroidCam, and another is called EpocCam. I have used EpocCam successfully myself (both with a USB cable and over wifi), and a fellow student in this course has used DroidCam successfully. If you don't have a suitable mount/stand for your smartphone, you can probably make a DIY one pretty easily.
If your internet connection is crappy, there isn't much I can do to help with that. But I do know a way to diagnose where the bottleneck is -- run a quick Speed Test which will show you whether it's your download or upload speed that's slow or both. Once the basic speed test has finished, click on the More Info button and wait for it to finish and show you the download and upload speed and the lag. If you share wi-fi with other people in your household, I suggest telling them in advance to please NOT use the wi-fi during the half-hour of your exam. Also, if you have a smartphone with a data plan, and enough data, you may want to use that as a backup internet connection.