NILE UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA
FACULTY OF NATURAL AND APPLIED SCIENCES
DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS
COURSE SYLLABUS
A. CATALOG DATA
Course Code PHY 101
Course Name General Physics I
Level Under Graduate Graduate
Course English
Language
Course Type Required Core Course Required Major Area Course
Technical Elective Non-Technical Elective
Credits Theory Practice NUN Credit ECTS Workload
2 0 2 - 2
Prerequisites -
Corequisities -
Course Sharafadeen Email Office Office Hours
Instructor Adeniji [email protected] B318 Open doors!
Teaching Email Office Office Hours
Assistant
Lecture Hours
Course General Physics I contains topics from the mechanics aspect of Physics. The course is designed to
Overview present concepts and applications of the following topics: kinematics, dynamics, gravitation,
energy, and momentum. This is a 3-credit unit course, so it involves three hours of lecture each
week for a semester.
B. TEXTBOOKS AND REFERENCES
Textbooks Young and Freedman: University Physics, 13th Edition.
References Serway and Jewett: Physics for Scientists and Engineers, 6th Edition.
Robert Resnick, Jearl Walker, and David Halliday: Fundamentals of Physics, 8th Edition.
C. COURSE LEARNING OUTCOMES
Learning The objective of PHY 101, which is the first part of a sequence of two algebra-based
Outcomes introductory physics courses, is to provide students with a rigorous description of physical
phenomena and to improve students’ problem-solving abilities.
D. COURSE CONTENTS
Topics Chapter 1: Units, Physical Quantities, and Vectors
Chapter 2: Motion along a Straight Line
Chapter 3: Motion in Two or Three Dimensions
Chapter 4: Newton's Laws of Motion
Chapter 5: Applications of Newton's Laws
Chapter 6: Work and Kinetic Energy
Chapter 7: Potential Energy and Energy Conservation
Chapter 8: Momentum, Impulse, and Collisions
E. WEEKLY LECTURE PLAN
Week Topics
1 Introduction
2 The nature of physics, solving physics problems, standards and units,
units’ consistency and conversions, uncertainty and significant figures,
vectors and vector addition
3 Components of vectors, unit vectors, and product of vectors
4 Displacement, Time, and average velocity, instantaneous velocity,
average and instantaneous acceleration
5 Motion with constant acceleration, freely falling bodies, position, and
velocity vectors
6 The acceleration vector, projectile motion, and motion in a circle
7 Force and interaction, Newton’s first law, Newton’s second law, mass
and weight, and Newton’s third law
8 Free-body diagram, using Newton’s first law: particles in equilibrium,
Using Newton’s second law: dynamics of particles
9 Frictional forces and dynamics of circular motion. Work, kinetic energy
and the work-energy theorem
10 Midterm exam
11 Work and energy with varying forces and Power
12 Gravitation potential energy, elastic potential energy
13 Conservative and nonconservative forces and potential energy
14 Momentum and impulse, conservation of momentum and momentum
conservation and collision
15 Elastic collisions and center of mass
16 General revision
F. ASSESSMENT METHODS AND CRITERIA
Course Method Quantity Percentage
Grading Attendance / Participation 15 10
Policy Quizzes
Homework Assignments
Laboratory -
Seminar / Workshop -
Project -
Application -
Field Work -
Midterm Exam 1 30
Final / Makeup Exam 1 60
G. ATTENDANCE / PARTICIPATION
Rules Classroom attendance is mandatory.
