Lecture IV video

Video of today's lecture is online.

Update: the slides are the file from as yesterday. You should be able to play the movies in your browser now, if you have the right plug-ins installed. I recommend firefox + quicktime.

Video of today's lecture

I haven't had time yet to do any processing (say, to cut out our 10' break in the middle), or even watch it all, but here you can find the video of today's lecture, as MPEG or Quicktime. (The accompanying powerpoint slides are here.)

A couple of quick observations on this:

• The projector screen is still off-camera, so it is a bit annoying you can't see the images I'm referring to, hence the separate download. My iSight is not up to the task of capturing the whole room.
• I am frequently off-camera. I knew I moved around a lot ...
  
• The whiteboard scribblings are readable, but sometimes just barely so. I need bigger markers (wider), and I should write bigger.
• I still dislike how my voice sounds recorded, and I look like a dork with the headset on. It was easily the best way to record the audio, though.

I don't know if these videos will actually be useful or not. I can imagine after listening to me for two hours already, you would be loathe to sit through a rerun ... on the other hand, for homework solutions, or trying to remember what I said about something in particular, maybe.

Ideally: one would remix the video with the powerpoint slides I used, so both appear side-by-side, cut out the 'dead' spots, and add some indexes so you could find any particular spot in the lecture at will. Or: I could continue getting at least a few hours of sleep per night.

Better yet: check out the iTunes University. People with staff, resources, and pro technology are already doing this ...

Friday's quiz

The quiz tomorrow will only cover relativity (ch. 26 in Serway, ch. 2 in the notes), it will not cover any of today's new material on electric forces.

The quiz is entirely concept-based, and has no calculations whatsoever. Questions like "Are time intervals longer or shorter moving observers." and so forth. It should take something like 15 minutes.

The actual format of the quiz is still a surprise, however. Almost guaranteed to be a pleasant one.

Thursday, 10 July 08

I wasn't quite satisfied with what we've done with relativity so far, and so I will spend half an hour on it again tomorrow. We hit all the high points, but have not done enough example problems to bring it all together, IMHO.

After the first 30mins or so, we'll start electrostatics. By and large, students find this much less conceptually difficult than relativity. If it feels like you're being thrown in the deep end so far, you are! But relax: it will pay off in the end. Relativity will be useful to us very soon, I promise. Treat the first two days as painful but necessary background for later goodies.

Anyway: the plan is 30mins relativity (incl. homework problems), the balance goes to electrostatics.

Lab: some of you already emailed me a paper. Good work: for doing two sessions' work in one, you can skip the lab today. Sadly, this was a one-time event - we have no other two-session labs. If you did not finish the paper yet, 6pm tomorrow is zero-hour.

Printed notes: any luck at the SUPe store? Anyone want hard copies?

Random homework hints:

5) This is just velocity addition/subtraction in disguise. The rest is there to distract you. Just like on the MCAT, e.g.
10) Wikipedia is your friend. But ... don't be going on about light cones and such unless you can back it up. Keep it simple :-) I'm in a generous mood: let's say that 3/4 of a page is close enough.

Printed Coures Notes

I did not have any copies of the notes printed at the SUPe store for the summer semester, because for the last two semesters, hardly anyone bought them. On average, only about 25% of the class purchased the notes, the rest elected to print them on their own, or read them online-only. Since the hard copies did not seem popular, I did not have more printed.

However, the SUPe store today told me that some people were inquiring about printed copies. They do have a few copies left from the last time I had notes printed, and agreed to put them on the shelves right away. The printed version they have is not up to date, and lacks some material that has been added to the online notes (for instance, the relativity chapter is not in the printed notes, nor are most example problems). However, the electricity and magnetism chapters are fairly complete.

If you strongly prefer a hard copy, you can try to get one of the remaining copies. They run about $30.

If you would strongly prefer a hard copy of the up-to-date notes, or find the SUPe store has run out, and would be willing to pay, leave me a comment here. If there is enough interest, I will see what I can do ASAP (like by Friday, perhaps).

Lab procedure 9 July 2008

Today is our first real lab period. Exciting, isn't it?

The plan for Wed 9 July and Thurs 10 July is for you to spend 2 days in groups researching and writing a small paper about a recent scientific development. Here is the writeup [pdf]; print out one copy per group when you arrive for the lab (329 Gallalee, 3:30pm TODAY).

Basically, you will have to:

• find a recent scientific development covered in the popular media (online)
• assess its importance
• assess the quality of the article (do you buy it? is it really a big deal?)
• relate it to physics/chemistry/biology courses you have taken
• relate it to your field of study

The thing is only supposed to be two pages long, so I think you can come up with something nice in two lab periods. Beware, however, that group writing is not always easier than going it alone: you will have to be organized and efficient.

And, yes, grade-wise this will count as two labs.

Course Intro & First Homework

Welcome to PH102! At the bottom of this page, you will find our course calendar, which you should review carefully. We will stick to our schedule rigidly, as our time is quite short over the summer semester.

You may also want to look over the course syllabus and other information, which you can find here. The slides I'll present in lecture today are here, which also includes all of the important syllabus-type information.

Finally, your first homework set is already due next Monday, 14 July 2008. Have a look.

See you at 10am ...