PHYS 195: Waves and Fields

News:

• 195 is done for 2009 !

Course Info:

Weekly Guides (pdf):

Extras:

• Waves in spacetime! LIGO (a nice overview by an undergrad at Macalester), interviews with gravity wave folks, and a quicktime movie of a numerical simulation of a black hole binary system.
• Here is an example final from 2007. This example gives a good idea of the range of questions, but is longer than the actual final.
• Two-slit interference and diffraction intensity applet.
• A short explanation with graphics of the different storgae capabilities of CDs and Blu-ray disks.
• Here is the Phet simulation of interference used in class on Friday, May 1.
• Rainbows! You all might enjoy this site devoted to the scattering of light from spherical droplets of water. Check out the variablity in published indices of refraction of water.
• Check your understanding of Faraday with the PhET Faraday's Electromagnetic Lab. The pickup coil and generator are particularly useful.
• Simple Huygens' Principle animations.
• Here's PhET lens demo.
• Burning Mirrors?? Did Archimedes use a mirror (or mirrors) to burn the Roman fleet? Here are translations of some accounts and pictures created centuries later. Here are some links giving some perspective from the physical point of view. There's more on the Siege of Syracuse in these pages.
• Snell's law waves, without the reflected wave, with the reflected wave.
• The electromagnetic spectrum.
• An animation of an e&m plane wave. Wave of an accelerating charge. Wave of an oscillating dipole.
• Detailed notes of the derivation of the wave equation of electro-magnetic fields - light!
• Notes for the Biot-Savart calculation of the magentic field on axis of a solenoid.
• The revised 2009 grade calculator (an excel spreadsheet). Simply fill in your quiz grades, solution set grades (out of 100), and estimates for the final and total bonus points, and the calculator will calculate your estimated grade. If you leave future solution set scores blank, then the computation is based on your current average.
• Here is the link to Kate McAlpine's "Large Hadron Rap" video, explaining what folks hope the LHC will accomplish.
• Here's a way to fix the silly positive/negative charge conventions. Too bad it is so difficult! (Thanks to Jake for pointing out this cartoon.)
• Electric motor kits will be distributed after break. These details include a desription of what it is all about and a description of a motor design.
• In the March issue of Physics Today there is an article on forensics in which uncertainty places a key role.
• The Electrostatic Model Builder can be dowloaded from here. This version requires a PC. Thanks to Brian Collett for this app!
• In two parts, here are the Quiz I solutions (1,2) The questions on the solution will be slightly different than the one on your quiz but the solutions should all be there.
• Check out this comic on resonance
• The Phet Electric Hockey!
• A fire track passing by illustrating the Doppler effect
• A one page review and an example Quiz I.
• Here's the derivation of the equation of motion for sound. (I use "D" for the displacement rather than "s" as in class.)
• Here's the Physics Teacher article by Mayo on the energy of waves at sea.
• I've added a Chladni (this is the correct spelling) plate picture to the banner. Wikipedia has more on Ernst and his plates. Here's a page of his notebooks! Of course, YouTube has Chladni plate videos.
• For more on ocean waves try this link.
• Animations of different types of wave motions.
• The Maple Demos: Try downloading the files to your computer then load them when running Maple via Citrix. (These links don't seem to be working.)
  • Simple movie of sinusiodal waves
  • Interference demo
  • Superposition and Fourier Series
• See a movie of a wine glass oscillating and then shattering.
• Here's PhET wave demo.
• There's a recent article on a more careful modeling of the Tacoma Narrows bridge. You can see more video on YouTube
• In class on Monday, February 9 we went through the gory details (pdf) of the solution to the driven, damped oscillator.
• The Citicorp Center in NYC has a tuned mass damper. For more specifics see Google Books.
• For more on "universality of SHM" see the "Small Oscillations in a Bound System" reading on e-Reserves.
• Galileo may have timed the swinging of the chandeliers in the Pisa cathedral. A picture of the ones installed in 1587, at History of Science at UO.
• Here is the sig fig practice for problem 1 of week 1.
• Here is thePhET spring mass-on-a-spring demo. Enjoy!
• In lecture on Friday Jan 30 I went over the vertical mass on a spring. Here are the notes on deriving the simple harmonic motion equation.
• We will discuss lots of material this semester. Here is a three page (is it possible?) review.

Labs (pdf):