Introduction to MasteringPhysics 6/1/20, 12(13 AM

Introduction to MasteringPhysics
Due: 7:59am on Wednesday, June 3, 2020
You will receive no credit for items you complete after the assignment is due. Grading Policy

A message from your instructor...

The purpose of the following exercises is to familiarize you with the system you will be using for the rest of your course.
These exercises are not intended to teach or test your knowledge of any specific subject material. Therefore, you will not
be penalized for using hints or submitting incorrect answers.

A Welcome to Mastering!

Mastering presents homework items assigned by your instructor and works with you to answer them. Homework items
typically have an introduction, possibly figures, and one or more parts for you to answer.

The purpose of the following exercises is to familiarize you with the system you will be using for the rest of your course.
These exercises are not intended to teach or test your knowledge of any specific subject material. Therefore, you will not
be penalized for using hints or submitting incorrect answers.

Grading
In a graded homework item, each part counts equally toward your score on the overall item. You may lose a fraction of
the credit for a part when you submit an incorrect answer. Whether you do lose credit and how much you lose are set by
your instructor. However, you won't lose credit for most types of formatting mistakes or for submitting a blank answer. You
can find more information about how your instructor is grading you be selecting your instructor's Grading Policy, which
can be found at the top of each assignment page. As you might expect, you will receive no credit for a part if you use the
Request Answer button. If you just can't figure out a question, there may be a way to get partial credit by using hints, as
the following part will illustrate. Also, note that for problems with hints, the option of requesting the answer is not available
until you have viewed at least one hint.

Part A
What is the magic number in ? You could try to guess the
magic number but you would probably use up all your tries
before getting the correct answer. Notice the View
Available Hint(s) link underneath the question statement
for this part. Selecting this link will open up a list of hints
that will guide you to the correct number.

Hint 1. How to approach the problem

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Notice that there are two hints for this question. You are not required to use all of the hints or to use them in
order. Each hint has a tagline that describes its contents. Based on the tagline you can decide whether or not
a particular hint will be useful to you. Your instructor may choose to give you a bonus for not using hints or to
deduct a small penalty for using hints. If you are stuck, using the hints will usually result in a higher score than
simply trying to guess because you may lose fewer points for opening a hint than for getting the answer to the
main question incorrect.

To help you, the magic number is equal to 10 ⋅ x , where x is a number between 1 and 8. Now, open up the
second hint to uncover the value of x .

Hint 2. What is x ?
You are told from the previous hint that the magic number is equal to 10 ⋅ x . For this problem, x is equal to 6.
Use this to compute the magic number and enter it below.

ANSWER:

magic number =
60

Answer Requested
Your instructor may choose to give you a bonus for not using hints or to deduct a small penalty for using hints. If
you are stuck, using the hints will usually result in a higher score than simply trying to guess because you may
lose fewer points for opening a hint than for getting the answer to the main question incorrect. Note that you are
never required to use the hints; if you want to figure the question out on your own, go ahead! Upon completing a
part though, you may go back and review the hints even if you didn't use them, as you might want to when
studying for a test. You do not lose any credit for viewing hints after completing the Part.

Part B
Multiple-choice questions have a special grading rule determined by your instructor. Assume that your instructor has
decided to grade these questions in the following way: If you submit an incorrect answer to a multiple-choice
question with n options, you will lose 1/(n − 1) of the credit for that question. Just like the similar multiple-choice
penalty on most standardized tests, this rule is necessary to prevent random guessing. If a multiple-choice question
has five answer choices and you submit one wrong answer before getting the question correct, how much credit will
you lose for that part of the question?
ANSWER:

100%

50%

33%

25%

20%

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Correct
Your instructor may choose not to deduct 1/(n − 1) of the credit for a multiple-choice question with n
options, so refer to your instructor's Grading Policy on your assignment page as mentioned before to see
how your instructor is grading you.

Mastering Your Mindset

Mindset is an idea proposed by Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck based on her research in motivation and
development. According to Dweck, people generally have a tendency to think with one of two different mindsets: a fixed
mindset or a growth mindset. As you start this semester, it can be useful to think about some ideas and strategies that
will help you to succeed. In these materials, we will describe some ideas about motivation, based on cutting-edge
research, and offer some suggestions for how to get the most out of Mastering and your course.

Watch the following videos and answer the accompanying questions to learn more.

Do You Have a Growth Mindset?

Part A
Which of the following describes a growth mindset, as opposed to a fixed mindset?
ANSWER:

Learning and growing your brain through opportunities helps performance in school

Challenging yourself by persisting longer with problems helps to grow your mental muscle

Believing your talents, abilities, and intelligence can be developed in different ways

All of the above phrases describe the growth mindset

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Mastering presents homework items assigned by your instructor and, with the help of hints and feedback,
works with you to answer them. Homework items typically have an introduction, possibly figures, and one
or more parts for you to answer. Mastering is designed to help you become an active learner, leading to
better knowledge retention and ultimately better performance on exams.

Part B
What is neuroplasticity?
ANSWER:

The inability to change intelligence, which is fixed in the neurons in our brain from birth

The ability to make new and stronger connections between the neurons in our brain as we learn

Having a fixed mindset in some ways, and a growth mindset in others

Correct
Much of how content is created in Mastering centers around the idea of "deliberate practice." When you
challenge yourself by deliberately practicing concepts, you learn more and make new and stronger
connections in your brain. Mastering is specifically designed to vary how you learn and give you lots of
opportunities to challenge yourself.

The Power of Making Mistakes

Part C
How do students with a growth mindset see their mistakes?

ANSWER:

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As opportunities to learn and improve their brain

As reasons to give up and avoid further challenges

As something that shouldn't happen in proper learning

Correct
Many questions in Mastering provide feedback when you get a question wrong to help guide your problem
solving and help you to think through the concepts. Directly addressing your mistakes and working through
them will help grow your mind.

Part D
How can you use Mastering to develop a growth mindset and embrace your mistakes?
ANSWER:

Question what went wrong and use hints or provide problem feedback to develop a new strategy

Repeat the question without changing your approach and input a different answer

Correct
Follow the growth mindset in Mastering:

Mastering tells you immediately whether or not your answers are correct. Usually you will
have multiple chances to arrive at the correct answer, as set by your instructor. If you do get a
question wrong, this gives you opportunity to reflect on what part of your strategy to refine.
You can use your textbook, hints, and feedback to reanalyze your work.
Hints offer suggestions to refine your approach and develop a new strategy to solve the
problem if you get stuck or if you get the question wrong. If you don't need the hints, you can
always use them to review later on or refer to them while solving other problem.
Many items offer specific feedback when you submit an incorrect answer. This feedback
should help you to focus your approach and adjust your strategy.

The Power of “Yet”

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Part E
Why is the word "yet" powerful in developing a growth mindset?
ANSWER:

It encourages you to stop trying when you fail because you are not smart enough and should choose a
new subject to study.

It encourages you to skip steps necessary to learn difficult concepts, and thus see results more quickly.

It encourages you to continue along your learning journey, as you have not yet reached the final
destination.

Correct
In Mastering, when you make a mistake in a problem, just think "I haven't solved it yet." Use any provided
feedback, hints, or your textbook to develop a new strategy and tackle the problem again.

Part F
Which is NOT an element in developing expertise in a field?

ANSWER:

Giving up

Putting forth effort

Trying new strategies

Asking for help

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Any expert you know probably spent countless hours working hard to improve, and chances are some of
that time they felt frustrated with their progress. This is not a bad sign! In any course, working through
challenging problems and learning from your mistakes is how you improve. It's better to make mistakes in
Mastering rather than on an exam.

Embracing Challenges

Part G
How do people with a growth mindset view and respond to challenges?
ANSWER:

They see challenges as a waste of effort and are embarrassed.

They see challenges as opportunities to learn and push their abilities.

They see challenges as signs their brains are getting weaker.

Correct
Mastering is designed to give you these challenging opportunities, leading to better knowledge retention
and ultimately better performance on exams. Mastering presents homework items assigned by your
instructor and works with you to answer them. The goal of Mastering is to help you get ready to excel on
the tests and learn. You can help yourself achieve this by trying to diagnose shortcomings while working
through the material and using that information to help yourself fill in those gaps. You may find some
Mastering problems really challenging. That's okay. Use that challenge as a learning opportunity.

Introduction to Numeric and Symbolic Answers

Grading for Numeric Answers

Tolerance

Some numeric answers to questions need to be exact. For example, the answer to the question "How many days are in a
week?" must be exactly 7.

In general though, numeric answers are graded as correct if they fall within an acceptable range (or tolerance) of the
official correct answer. For example, if the answer to a numeric problem with a tolerance of 2% was 105, then entering
any value between 103 and 107 would be graded as correct, as shown in the region shaded green below. The typical
grading tolerance in Mastering is 2-3%, although this value may vary (e.g. more lenient) depending on the particular
problem.

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Significant Figures

While Mastering does not directly grade your answer based on the number of significant figures it contains, the tolerance
mentioned above is centered around the properly-rounded answer (as opposed to the full-precision answer). In some
problems you will be explicitly told how many significant figures your answer should contain. You may find that entering
extra significant figures than required often causes your answer to still fall within the accepted tolerance and thus graded
as correct. However, there are problems where not rounding properly may cause your answer to fall outside the accepted
tolerance, so it's important to follow the general rules for significant figures, as the following example illustrates.

Suppose you are asked to find the area of a rectangle that is 3.1 cm wide and 4.4 cm long. The full-precision answer
from your calculator would be 13.64 cm2 , although given the rules for significant figures, this answer should be rounded
to two significant figures before being entered, or 14 cm2 . If you were to enter 13.64 cm2 , it would not be graded as
correct since this value falls outside the 2% tolerance of the properly-rounded answer of 14 cm2 . Instead, you would
receive feedback from Mastering telling you to check the rounding of your final answer, although you would not be
deducted any points.

Part A
What is the area of a rectangle that is 3.1 cm wide and 4.4 cm long? Enter the full-precision answer first to see the
corresponding feedback before entering the properly-rounded answer. (You do not need to enter the units in this
case since they are provided to the right of the answer box).
ANSWER:

14 cm2

Answer Requested

Calculations Involving Multiple Steps

This example raises another critical point about performing calculations in science that involve multiple steps: Make sure
to keep more significant figures than required during each intermediate step and round your final answer only as
the very last step! If you take the value displayed in your calculator and round it before proceeding to the next step, you
may encounter round-off error with your final answer deviating from the correct answer. (Tip: most calculators have an
answer button (e.g. "Ans") that allows you to use the full number from the previous calculation).

In Part B, you are asked to calculate the volume of a rectangular prism that has a length of 4.4 cm , a width of 3.1
cm , and a height of 6.3 cm , which is found by multiplying the area of the base times the height. In Part A it was correct
to round the result to two significant figures (14 cm2 ), since finding the area was the final step for that problem. However,
given that this result is now being used in the calculation for Part B, you should use the full-precision value (13.64 cm2 )
and only round upon reaching the final value for the volume, which is now the final step of the calculation.

Part B
Calculate the volume of a rectangular prism with a length of 4.4 cm , a width of 3.1 cm , and a height of 6.3 cm . (As

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before, you do not need to enter the units since they are provided to the right of the answer box.)

ANSWER:

86 cm3

Correct

Numeric Answers with Units

In some problems, you will be required to enter the numerical value of your answer along with the corresponding units.
You can enter only numeric values (including scientific notation), as opposed to full calculations or algebraic expressions.
The same grading, tolerance, and significant figure rules apply as before for numeric answers.

Unless the instructions explicitly ask you to use a specific unit in your answer, you are free to enter any equivalent unit
within the same unit system given in the problem (e.g. if the answer is 1 m , you may also enter 100 cm since those
quantities are equivalent). In general just be sure to use the appropriate abbreviations and prefixes for units (for a list of
recognized units in Mastering, feel free to reference Acceptable Units).

Note that for compound units, you must use explicit multiplication between the units. For instance, newton-meter can be
entered as N ⋅ m or N − m , but not Nm .

Part C

The momentum of an object is determined to be 7.2× 10-3 kg ⋅ m/s . Express this quantity as provided or use any
equivalent unit. (Note: 1 kg = 1000 g).
ANSWER:

kg⋅m
7.2×10−3
s

Correct

Symbolic Answers

Finally, for some problems you will be required to enter a symbolic expression as your solution instead of a numeric
value. The templates above the answer box allow you to enter any special math formats or characters you may need.

In terms of grading, as long as your answer is algebraically equivalent to the correct answer, it will be graded as correct.
For instance, suppose the solution to a problem is: x(x + 3) . You may note that this can also be rewritten as x2 + 3x,

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so as a result entering this expression would also be accepted.

Part D
−2gλ
−−−3
Enter the following expression in the answer box below: √ , where λ is the lowercase Greek letter lambda.
m
ANSWER:

−−−−3
√ 2gλ
m

Answer Requested

Introduction to Vector Notation

Some problems in MasteringPhysics require answers in the form of a single vector or an expression involving multiple
vectors. This problem will show you how to enter vector answers in MasteringPhysics.

Throughout the problem, refer to , which shows a two-

dimensional coordinate system and four vectors: A ⃗ , B⃗ , C ⃗ ,
and D⃗ .

Component notation

One common way of expressing vectors is in terms of their components. For example, the x component of A ⃗ , written
Ax , is equal to 2.5 (since that is its length along the x axis). Likewise, the y component of A ⃗, written Ay , is 3. You can
express a vector in terms of its coordinates as follows: A ⃗ = (Ax , Ay ) = (2.5, 3) . What this means is that if the tail of
the vector A ⃗ is at the origin, then its tip is at the coordinates (x, y) = (2.5, 3) .

When a problem in MasteringPhysics requires a vector answer in component form, the answer instructions will typically
read something like "Enter your answer as a pair of vector components, separated by a comma." In this case, you
would enter your answer to the above scenario as 2.5,3. The surrounding parentheses should not be entered.

Part A
⃗
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Using component notation, enter the vector B⃗ in the answer box.

Enter your answer as a pair of vector components, separated by a comma. You should not enter any
parentheses.

Hint 1. Components of B⃗

The x component of B⃗ is 2, and the y component of B⃗ is −3 .

ANSWER:

Bx , By = 2,-3

Correct

Unit vectors

As the name suggests, unit vectors are vectors of unit length (1). It is common and often convenient to write vectors in
^ ) and a unit vector in the y direction (y^ ). In three dimensions, there is an
terms of a unit vector in the x direction (x
additional unit vector in the z direction (z^ ). Some textbooks use the unit vectors ^
i , ^j , and k
^ in place of x
^ , y^ , and z^ ,
respectively.

For example, you can express the vector A ⃗ in terms of unit vectors as follows: A ⃗ = ^ + 3y^ .
2.5x
When a problem in MasteringPhysics requires a vector answer in terms of unit vectors, the answer instructions will
^ and y^ ."
typically read something like "Enter your answer in terms of the unit vectors x

Part B

How would you express B⃗ using unit vectors?

^ and y^ . Use the

Express your answers in terms of the unit vectors x button under the
menu in the answer box to create unit vectors.
ANSWER:

B⃗ = 2x
^ − 3y^

Answer Requested

Regular vectors

Sometimes, instead of using components and/or unit vectors, you may need to express a vector in terms of another
vector or vectors. As a simple example, in the figure provided, D⃗ = B⃗ . If the reason for this is presently unclear, don't
worry; you will learn more about vectors in class. Here we just want to be sure you know how to enter them in
MasteringPhysics.

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When a problem in MasteringPhysics requires a vector answer in terms of other vectors, the answer instructions will
typically read something like "Enter your answer in terms of the vectors A ⃗ and B⃗ ."

Part C

Enter the expression −2C ⃗ + 6D⃗ in the answer box using the notation just described.

Express your answer in terms of C ⃗ and D⃗ . Use the button under the menu in the answer
box to create vectors.
ANSWER:

−2C ⃗ + 6D⃗ = −2C ⃗ + 6D⃗

Answer Requested

Getting Started: Dynamic Study Modules

Some Mastering courses include Dynamic Study Modules. To learn more, watch the video, Getting Started: Dynamic
Study Modules, and answer the questions below.

Part A
What is the primary function of Dynamic Study Modules?
ANSWER:

Normalize student learning so the teacher knows what to focus on in lecture

Allow students to collaborate with each other on assignments in Mastering

Assess what a student already knows, and where he or she may want to focus additional study

Give students real-life applications of the concepts they are currently learning in class

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Dynamic Study Modules provide personalized content to target a student's strengths and weaknesses, to
improve overall scores on class quizzes and exams. Dynamic Study Modules improve a student's areas of
weak understanding by presenting relevant materials from the text.

Part B
What is required to access Dynamic Study Modules?
ANSWER:

Enrollment in a course that uses Mastering with Dynamic Study Modules

Previously signing in from a desktop, if using DSM on the mobile app

A current Mastering username and password

All of the above

Correct

Score Summary:
Your score on this assignment is 0%.
You received 0 out of a possible total of 0 points.

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