I have revised the syllabus for the course. I have dropped Chapter 16 - Fission and Fusion, added a new topic Life, Emerging Structures, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics for Class 16, and re-arranged the dates of when things will be discussed and when the Pre-Class Quizzes will be held. The home page for the course has been updated.
| The button to the right accesses Course Notes on the new topic in a separate window. We will discuss this material in Class 16, Wednesday March 8. | |
This change means that today's Pre-Class Quiz did not include questions on chaos.
Class 15 on Monday March 6 will begin with a Pre-Class Quiz on chaos and on the new topic of Life, Emerging Structures, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
| Access to the Course Notes on Chaos was provided in the summary for Class 11. For your convenience, those links are repeated to the right. |
| This week's homework assignment is two supplementary problems. A pdf of them is available via the button to the right. It is due in the Drop Box for your tutor by 5 PM on Monday March 6. | |
It is a good time to begin thinking about the paper you will write for this course. Homework #7, due on Monday March 13, will ask you for the title, topic, preliminary outline and preliminary bibliography of the paper.
| A pdf of today's Quiz #5 and the answers is available via the button to the right. | |
My treatment of the material of Chapter 11 diverges even more than usual from the way it is discussed in the text. Here are a couple of Flash animations which closely mirror what we did in class today:
| This animation derives length contraction from time dilation. | |
| And this animation derives the relativity of simultaneous events from length contraction. This topic is not discussed in the text. | |
We asked a series of In-Class Questions. We set up the physical circumstance as follows:
Mt. Hood and Mt. Rainier are volcanoes. They are 300 km apart in their rest frame. Velma is stationary relative to the volcanoes and is half way between them. The volcanoes each erupt in a burst of light. Velma sees the two flashes of light at the same time. |
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| The button to the right, then, accesses the questions that we asked about this. | |
| And here is a link to the pdf of today's journal. | |
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