TYCHO
INTERACTIVE EXAMPLE

INSTRUCTIONS

(For now, this is just a copy of the homework instructions.)

To enter an answer, click in the answer box to move the input cursor to that question, then type your answer. To then enter the answer to another question, click in the answer box for that question.

Each problem has several sections, some of which might include more than one question. An Enter button appears at the end of each section (not necessarily next to each answer box). All Enter buttons are equivalent. When you are ready to submit one or more of your answers for grading, click on any of the Enter buttons on the screen. Clicking on an Enter button (actually, clicking on any button, including Help and Reset buttons) submits all of your answers for judging. (Clicking on the Reset buttons, described below, erases the corresponding answers and submits all others for judging.)

Each submitted answer will be echoed on the line below the input box in which it was typed. The echoed answer will be followed by the word OK if the answer is correct. The echoed answer will be followed by the word NO if the answer is not correct (but could be interpreted). If what you typed cannot be interpreted as just a single number (see the "numbers only" paragraph below), the echoed answer will be followed by the word UNINTERPRETABLE and a message indicating which character the interpreter was looking at when it gave up. To change an answer, just click on that input box, erase the old answer, and type the new one. You will then need to click on an Enter button, as described above, to submit your new answer and have it judged.

Your answer must be within 1% of the actual value to be considered correct (and so marked OK). This 1% requirement means that you need to report at least three significant figures in all the answers you submit for grading and that you should carry at least four singificant figures in all your intermediate calculations. No checks are done by the judging routine for sign-only or power-of-ten errors. If your answer is being juged NO, you should check your work for a possible power-of-ten problem (for example, you might have used a length in cm instead of in m) and for a possible overall sign error (the correct answer is the negative of the answer you put in) as well as for conceptual and computational errors.

All answers to questions in this set are to be numbers only. Numerical expressions are not allowed. Functions (sin, cos, sqrt, log, etc.) are not recognized. Numerical operators (+, -, *, /, **, ^, etc.) are generally not allowed; however, a leading unary + or - is ok. You'll need to work out your answer on your calculator and enter only the final number as your answer. An exponent number format is available for entering answers that are very large or very small numbers. An answer of -123000 could be entered that way or as -1.23e5 or -1.23e+5. An answer of 0.0000456 could also be entered as 4.56e-5 or +4.56e-5. No units (kg, m, s, N, C, J, deg, rad, etc.) should be included in any answer. (Units will be pointed to as UNINTERPRETABLE if you do try to include them.) For all answers that have dimensions, the assumed units will be displayed just to the right of the input box. Your answer must be scaled to those units: for example, if the displayed units are "cm", you must convert your answer to a number of centimeters before entering it.

When you first enter the correct answer to any question, an asterisk * will be displayed to the far right on the same line as the answer box for that question. There is nothing you can do that will cause an asterisk -- once displayed for a particular question -- to disappear. Even if you erase the answer or replace it with an incorrect answer, the asterisk will remain -- indicating that you have credit recorded for having (at least once) answered the question correctly.

One or more levels of help is available for all sections of each problem. The Help button for a given section appears to the right of the last question box in that section. When you click on a Help button, the help will appear just below the question box. If more help is available, the Help button will also still appear. If the Help button no longer appears, then there is no further help available for that section. At the bottom of the page is an All Help button. Clicking on that button causes all levels of help for all sections to be displayed. Be careful in using the Help buttons and especially in using the All Help button. Keep in mind that your level of understanding of the course material should be such that you can work the problems from just the problem statements (as on an exam) without using the help at all. If the help was supposed to be considered just a routine part of the statement of the problem it would have been included there. Don't fool yourself in this regard!

Once you have entered any answer or displayed any help in a section of the problem, a Reset button will appear along with the Enter button for that section. If you click on that Reset button, all answers and helps for that section of the problem will be erased and it will be as if you are starting that section over -- except that any asterisks (indicating previously entered correct answers) and corresponding recorded credit will still be in place. At the bottom of the page is a Reset All button. Clicking on that button will erase all your answers and all the help on all the questions of the current problem. You can then enter new answers and/or display or redisplay the various levels of help. Clicking on the Reset All button does not remove displayed asterisks or the corresponding recorded credit from the questions.

In addition to always remembering (as indicated by the asterisk displayed to the right of the answer box) your credit for having at one time answered a question correctly, the system also remembers your most recent answer to each question, the OK or NO judgment made on that answer, and the levels of help that had been requested. When you return to a problem in a later session, all this will still be in place. (To start a problem -- or section of a problem -- over, use the reset options described above.)

The gradebook tracks your total score on each problem. (It does not record credit at the level of individual questions.) If you have less than full credit for a problem and are trying to track down the cause, go to the problem itself and check for questions for which no asterisk is displayed to the far right on the line on which the input box for that question appears. These are questions on which you do not yet have credit. (If all questions are marked by asterisks, a reduced problem score is due to questions having been answered after the full-credit deadline for the problem.)

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