MIT Subject Evaluations

8.01X: Physics I
Fall 1998 Summary

Lecturer: Professor Rainer Weiss
Recitation Instructor: Dr. Peter Dourmashkin
Recitation Instructor: Kieran M. Holland
Recitation Instructor: Professor Lawrence Rosenson

Enrollment: 130
Number of students commenting: 45

8.01X is an introductory class that covers the basic topics in physics, such as classical mechanics. What makes 8.01X different from other mechanics courses are the take home experiments used in the class to supplement the class work.

A majority of respondents described Professor Weiss' lectures as irrelevant to the course work and exams. Students felt that he was confusing, uninteresting, and frequently wavered from topic to topic in lecture. A common complaint was that the lectures focused too much on derivation and not enough on example problems. However, a few students described Professor Weiss' teaching style as good to excellent, with one student even writing that "[Professor Weiss,] You're the coolest!".

Dr. Dourmashkin got rave reviews for his recitation section. Half of his students rated his teaching as excellent and all but one gave positive comments. One respondent called recitation his "Favorite time in the week." The lone dissenter felt that Dr. Dourmashkin took too much recitation time answering simple questions. In all, Dr. Dourmashkin's popularity is reflected by the suggestions of two of his students on how to improve 8.01X: "Have Dourmashkin lecture."

With regard to Professor Rosenson, aproximately half his students described him as interesting with a very good teaching style, an equal number thought that Rosenson didn't answer questions, didn't speak clearly, and didn't use the standard notations found in lecture.

There was only one comment made about Recitation Instructor Holland: "Effective." Make of it what you will.

Most comments on the subject material of 8.01X regarded the labs. Most students felt that the labs were rewarding and interesting. One person said that the labs add "a twist to the traditional freshman physics." However, a few students mentioned that the labs seemed unrelated to the subject material, and that there was little continuity between labs, readings, problem sets and tests. Others felt that the experiments were not well prepared and that the instructions for the labs were unclear. A couple of students wrote that the experiments required a basic knowledge of electricity and circuits; knowledge which many freshman physics students do not possess.

The general comments on the subject material were positive, describing it as interesting and entertaining. However, a couple of students said 8.01X seemed to move slower and cover less than other freshman physics courses; others felt too little time was spent on difficult subjects like angular momentum.

Students suggested altering the content of lectures to make them more relevant to the problem sets and tests. They felt that lecture should spend less time on derivations and more on problems; lectures should contain more relevant, common examples of the concepts. A large group of students also wrote that the experiments needed to correlate more with the rest of the subject material. A few others felt that it was "inappropriate" to require 8.02 knowledge for labs in an 8.01 class.

Overall, students felt that while 8.01X was a generally okay class, it had several problems with its lectures and labs. The lectures were poorly done and generally irrelevant to the exams. The labs correlated poorly with the subject material and required knowledge of circuits and electricity to perform.