Lab for Thursday (18 Oct 07)

Here you go. Ac circuits and filters.

Basically, this is the stuff that makes your stereo work. Though the lab is couched in terms of the phase-shifted response in RC circuits, what we will really make is a low-pass filter, which is useful for separating the audio signals that should be sent to a woofer. A high-pass filter is what sends the signal to the tweeter. Hopefully, those last sentences will make sense by the end of Tuesday!

Also, by the end of Tuesday, you will see how a bunch of high-pass and low-pass filters together make an audio crossover, or equalizer.

So, if physics hasn't seemed useful yet, by the end of this week it will at least explain how your stereo works. This lab goes to eleven.

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I'm feeling generous. Three bonus homework points for the first person to leave a comment identifying the movie referenced in the above post. Just leave your name and the name of the appropriate movie in a comment to this post ...

Paper details

As I have mentioned a few times before, you have a 5 page paper this semester.

It won't be too bad.

Here are the details, subject to change. You need to choose a source ... soon.

The Plan for this week (15-29 Oct 07)

Ok. Due to my absence for the last half of the week, we'll do things a bit differently this week.

Short-attention-span version: double lecture Tues, no lecture Thurs.

Detailed version:

(1) I am gone for a conference from 17 until 20 Oct

• accessible via email to an extent
• it is easier to alter the schedule than to find a sub

(2) on Tuesday 16 Oct:

• finish unit on induction
• start and finish and ac circuits unit (short)
• double lecture, no lab

(3) on Thursday 18 Oct:

• no lecture, only lab
• ac circuits lab
• short induction lab

(4) for Friday 19 Oct:

• next homework set due (already assigned)
• covers (mostly) magnetic induction
• quiz covering magnetism and induction

(5) During the last half of the week

• you are responsible for reading the section on EM waves!
• it is not difficult, but we may not get to it in class
• it will, however, `be on the test'
• in the course notes or the Serway book

(6) Starting next week: optics

• for better or worse, we will be mostly done with E&M