PHYS-141-05 Tues/Thurs 2:10 – 4:00, 180-265, Baker Science
Pete Schwartz, Cal Poly Physics, Pete’s Webpage, Pete’s other classes, Pete’s Research
Email: pschwart@calpoly.edu, 756-1220, My office is at 180-608, the new science building, room 608
Office hours: M(11:10), T(10:10), W(5:10), R(12:10), F(11:10)
The Syllabus explains the class policies including how your final grade is determined.
Teaching “flipped”, “parallel”, with an open-online text. Please see video explaining How we are learning physics if you are not a student in the class, or if you don’t need to get credit for seeing the video, you can see the youtube version of How we are learning physics. A recent publication lends support to several aspects of our learning method: Active learning better engages the brain; asking questions (like in our videos) is an effective way to learn; learning concepts in parallel allows us to space out the concepts and revisit them over a longer period of time.
While I assign videos via a website that keeps track of your participation, you can also access my youtube videos directly from my youtube website, or just google the titles. However, in order to receive credit for watching the videos, you need to follow the links on this website.
I am writing a basic textbook to cover the material consistent with our timeline. I will add the chapters here and also at the appropriate place in the timeline as I write them. In week 5, I started to use chapters from the newly available OpenStax calculus based textbook because many of them work for us after we have set the foundation of conceptual understanding. I will intersperse these chapters with the short conceptual guidance I write to support the videos.
Group project: see the first project description, the Second Project Description, and the Second Project Website where you can post your project,
Problem Sets: PS#1, PS#1 Pete’s Answers, PS#2, PS#2 Answers, PS#3, MT#1 from last quarter + extra questions, PS#3 guidance, PS#4, PS#4 guidance, PS#5,PS#5 Guidance, PS#6, PS#6 Guidance, PS#7, PS#7 Solutions, PS#8, PS#8 Solutions, PS#9, PS#9 Solutions, PS#10, Precession Lab Results, PS#10 Solutions
Exams:
- Big Exam 1 Suggested Solution NOTE: This is only one process of many that could yield all the quality. What is important that you see the care that I set up the problem. The calculations are of secondary importance.
- Big Exam #2 which is question #1 of MT#1 from Fall 2015, Find this exam (and many others) by following links to past classes (top of page).
- MT#1, MT#1 w/ answers, MT#1 Student Solutions.
- Big Exam #3 Big Exam #3 (three examples of good papers)
- Big Exam #4 Satellite Problem Discussed, Loop Discussion and solution Satellite Problem Discussed one good example
- MT#2, with two more (underlined) questions for greater pratice MT#2 Solutions
- Big Exam! #6, Big Exam #6 guidance, Big Exam #6 solutions
- Big Exam #7 is questions #5 and #9 on Problem Set #8
Response to Friday Feedback: I will ask you for your thoughts and provide a summary and my response here: Week 2, Week 5
Student Evaluations for this class
To see the week’s assignments, please click on the number of the week at left on the table below.
| Week page | Topics |
| 1
9/22 |
Our Learning Model Intro to 4-Concepts: qualitative approach to looking at phenomena Hour 1: Introductions Hour 2: 4 lenses, look at the rock falling from a cliff through the four lenses. What’s happening? add direction with momentum – two objects moving in opposite directions. when they hit, what happens? two examples: (1) they stop, (2) one has twice the mass and equal speed. |
| 2
9/27 9/29 |
Hour 1 – Introduce formulas for gravitational potential energy the acceleration of gravity, and do a calculation where you drop a rock from 10 meters and calculate its speed when it hits the ground. Also calculate the momentum. Energy – introduce formulas kinetic energy and the unit of a Joule with explicit showing of the units – what happens to the kinetic energy if I double the mass? If I double the speed? Forces, what if I push on something in the opposite direction it is moving in? Hour 2 – Forces and how they affect momentum (p/t) and energy (work)- see video if you need refresher. – probably we’re not ready for this yet: Rate of change. speed, acceleration, power Hour 3 – Analyzing problems from all lenses. Power. Hour 4 – Graphical analysis of one-dimensional motion. Work, Energy, Power in people. |
| 3
10/4 10/6 |
Hour 1: Video activity Hour 2: One-dimensional version of dynamics protocol
Hour 3: Vectors in one dimension |
| 4 10/11 10/13 |
Hour 1: Changing reference frames Hour 2: Friction Hour 3: Midterm #1 Hour 4: Review MT #1 |
| 5
10/18 10/20 |
Introduction to Rotation Hour 1: 4 kinds of rotational questions and direction Hour 2: moment of inertia and rotational energy and rotational dynamics 1-D rotational kinetics, torque Hour 3: Statics Hour 4: Angular momentum (conserved) as a scalar kind of. |
| 6
10/25 10/27 |
|
| 7
11/1 11/3 |
|
| 8
11/8 11/10 |
Day 1: Midterm #2 Day 2: Introduction to components, 2 Dimensions 2-dimensions: components for force, torque, work Components for momentum in x and y and but angular momentum components only deal with two objects spinning on the same axis in opposite directions. Parabolic trajectory Dynamics protocol for asking the question and Inclined plane versus fuzzy dice problem. |
| 9
11/15 11/17 |
|
| Thanksgiving Break | |
| 10
11/29 12/1 |
Torque as rate of change of angular momentum including precession include a day lab… precession lab Trigonometry revisit parbolic trajectory, and Torque and work, and everything Malicious equations of linear and rotation kinematics |
| 11
12/6 12/8 |
Ladder Problem Sharing Video Projects Bugatti Veyron Problem Final exam review |
| Exam week | Thursday, 4 PM in our classroom, 180-265 Cal Poly exam Schedules |
An asterisk indicates that the link is to a page from a past class and hasn’t been updated yet.
As I try to improve the class, I am keeping Notes to Self