Departmental Statement on Intellectual Honesty

All Iowa state students are expected and required to abide by the ethical standards defined in or implied by the Student Information Handbook. The faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy support these standards. To avoid any unfortunate misunderstandings, the following remarks concerning intellectual honesty are addressed to all our students:

All work that you submit under your name and as your own should in fact be the result of your efforts and be a fair representation of those efforts.

* If you copy someone else's homework, or pre‑lab assignment, in whole or in part, you are violating this principle.

* If you follow someone else's homework or pre‑lab assignment solutions without having attempted each part on your own, you are violating this principle.

* If you follow someone else's laboratory report, rather than struggle with the experiment yourself, you are violating this principle.

* If you refer to unauthorized materials, such as crib notes or another student's paper during exams, or old lab reports during laboratory, you are violating this principle.

* If you cannot solve an example yourself, yet to deceive the grader you submit an answer from a friend or the back of the book, you are violating this principle.

* If you misrepresent the circumstances concerning an absence from class or a late assignment, you are acting in a dishonest manner.

Of course, you are permitted and indeed encouraged to seek help in understanding your homework and pre‑lab assignments from instructors, fellow students and others. However, anything you ask about must be something you first have attempted to understand or solve yourself, and any solutions that appear on your paper must reflect your understanding. If you cannot take a blank sheet of paper and work through the solution a second time on your own, without reference to anyone else or their work, then you should not hand in the work under your name, or represent it as your own. Answers obtained from some other source for purposes of checking results should be labeled appropriately, such as 'book answer".

In laboratory, you are permitted and indeed encouraged to ask questions of and interact with the instructor and other students. In fact, the lab rooms should be noisy with chatter. Laboratory class is a place to learn what you can, whatever your ability or background; it is not a two‑hour examination period. However, if you come to lab unprepared and depend on others to do the work and thinking while you record the results and their thoughts on your report, you are violating the principle stated above.

We expect and demand that all students respect the principle stated above. Intellectual honesty is fundamental in the life of a university and to learning and progress in the sciences. Students who commit dishonest acts bring dishonor upon themselves and this university.

We give our assurances to those many students who as a matter of principle and habit are honest that we do not intend to let others gain unfair advantage over you by dishonest acts. Dishonest acts will not be ignored; such acts typically will be reported to the Dean of Students for disciplinary action, and students who commit such acts typically will not receive a passing grade for the course involved.