York University
Fall 2016 – (unofficial) Course Website (physics stuff)
Basic Information
- Course Description: See Moodle
- Location & Time: MWF 9-12 (Bergeron 313)
- Instructor (Physics): Christopher Bergevin
Office: Petrie 240
Email: cberge [AT] yorku.ca
Office Hours: By appointment
Phone: 416-736-2100 ext.33730 - Co-Instructor: Lauren Grant (legrant@yorku.ca)
Wolfson, R. (2016). : Pearson - Text Essential University Physics: Volumes 1 and 2, Third Edition, by Wolfson, R (Pearson, 2016)
Updates and useful bits
- [2016.12.21] Solutions for the first integrated assignment are now available (finally!) here.
- [2016.12.15] The final exam has now been graded. Some basic stats can be found here. Am hoping to find some class time in the new year to go over the exams, so to help identify strengths/weaknesses in how to approach these types of problems. Note that while I’m happy to go over the exam w/ you in person, I won’t send individual scores over email (for the sake of privacy).
- Resources/guidance for the upcoming final exam (12/12/16) will be posted here soon. In the meantime, the best way to prepare is to read the relevant book chapters (noted below), review the course notes (again, all provided below; note especially the problems contained therein), and practice problems from the books (incl. the conceptual “For THought and Discussion” problems; try working in groups for those!). It would also be useful to review the 1010 notes (linked below) as a supplement to all this. Lastly, though there won’t be anything explicitly computational/Matlab on the final exam, the codes provided here can help enormously to gain insight/intuition for the relevant concepts (e.g., the harmonic oscillator code can give you an idea of how things, well, oscillate). And don’t forget that “ladder problem”….
- The first (rocket-themed) integrated assignment can be accessed here
- Links to some resources that might be useful will be added here as we go:
- Guide to get Matlab running remotely (via York’s internal server). Guide to help get you started with plotting in Matlab.
Class Notes
- 2016.12.09 – Review
- Overview for how to prep for the exam
- Some sample problems to try to solve (solutions will be hashed out at the review session)
- Cribbed version of Polya’s method for approaching/tackling tough problems…
- 2016.12.05 – Summary
- Slides
- Example codes:
- EXspectrogram.m (here are the audio recordings: whole class at once and each individually; associated spectrograms can be viewed here and here)
- EXintegrate2.m
- EXcoffee.m
- Link to Bialek’s book
- 2016.12.02 – Oscillations
- Book reading: Wolfson ch. 13.1-13.7
- Slides
- Example codes: EXharmOSCode45.m (you’ll need this too)
- 2016.11.30 – Systems, Momentum (cont), Oscillations
- 2016.11.28 – Mitosis and Transport, Center of Mass, Volumes (via integrals)
- 2016.11.23 – Systems, Momentum
- 2016.11.21 – Review: Conservation of Energy, Gravity
- Book reading: Wolfson ch. 7.1-7.6, 8.1-8.5
- Slides
- Simple self-contained Matlab code that allows you to simulate planetary motion (fixed sun, but movable planet; via a 2nd order Runge-Kutta routine), commonly referred to as the “two-body problem”: EXtwobodyB.m
- Another simple code to allow you to fiddle w/ plotting multi-variable functions EXcreate3D2.m
- Relevant F10 PHYS 1010 notes: Energy – here, here and here; Gravity – here
- 2016.11.18 – Integrals
- No physics lecture today per se, but recall some Matlab codes posted earlier that can help w/ concepts tied to integration as being covered by Prof. Madras: INTexample1.m
- 2016.11.16 – Waves (cont) & X-ray Crystallography
- 2016.11.04 – Waves
- Book reading: Wolfson ch. 14.2-14.7
- Slides
- Example code to allow you to deal multivariable functions and fiddle w/ plotting such in Matlab: EXcreate3D.m (see also EXcreate3D2.m)
- 2016.11.02 – Light III – Interactions w/ matter (cont.), Vision, Waves
- Book reading: Wolfson ch. 14.1, 31.4, 32.1-32.2, 36.4-36.5
- Slides
- Example codes (re Newton’s method for polynomial root finding): EXnewtonRun.m (will also need this function)
- 2016.10.26 – Light II – Quantal nature of light, Interactions w/ matter
- Book reading: Wolfson ch.29.6, 32.2, 32.6, 33.7, 34.1-34.5
- Slides
- 2016.10.24 – Light I – What is light?
- Book reading: Wolfson ch.14.1, 29.1, 29.4-29.8, 34.1-34.3
- Slides
- 2016.10.17 – Tangents II
- Book reading: Wolfson ch.8.2, 24.1, 25.3
- Slides
- Slate article “NASA Sets Sight on Mars. I Just Hope Its Aim Is True”
- The Economist article “The World Is Not Enough”
- Recent-ish paper (“The light side of the force”) dealing with molecular biophysics that might be of interest…
- 2016.10.12 – Tangents…
- 2016.10.07 – Energy (cont)
- 2016.10.05 – Work, Integrals, Energy, & all that…
- 2016.10.03 – Friction & Drag, Intro. to Work/Energy
- 2016.09.30 – Using Newton’s Laws
- 2016.09.28 – Newton’s Laws
- 2016.09.23 – Mechanics: 2-D, 3-D, Vectors, etc…
- 2016.09.21 – Mechanics: 2-D, 3-D, Vectors, etc…
- Book reading: Wolfson ch.3
- Slides
- Example code: EXprojectileM2.m
- Relevant F10 PHYS 1010 notes: here and here
- 2016.09.19 – Introduction to modeling
- Slides I (cont from 9/14)
- Slides II
- Example codes: EXlimits5.m, LadderOPT.m
- 2016.09.14 – Mechanics: 1-D
- Book reading: Wolfson ch.2
- Slides
- 2016.09.12 – Introduction to computing
- Slides
- Example codes: EXplotTANH.m, INTexample1.m, EXestimatePI.m
- 2016.09.11 – Guided practice problems
- 2016.09.09 – Introduction
- Book reading: Wolfson ch.1
- Slides
HW Assignments
To be determined…..