PHYS 195: Waves and Fields

News:

• The final is self-scheduled from Tuesday morning to Friday morning. Set aside 3-4 hours.
• My hours are: Tuesday 9-5, Wednesday 9-5, Thursday 9-2:30, Friday 9-12. As you study, feel free to email or call me with questions.
• The solutions to the problem sets are posted on the Library's Course Reserves.

Course Info:

Weekly Guides (pdf):

Extras:

• Here's the example final. This example gives a good idea of the range of questions, but is longer than the actual final. Ignore question 17!
• Simple Huygens' Principle animations.
• For more on Galileo's observations of the moons of Jupiter see the Galileo Project site.
• 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.
• The solutions to Quiz II have an incorrect solution to 3. This is the correction. Many thanks to Jim Schreve for finding this error!
• Here's PhET lens demo.
• The notes from the derivation of the wave equation of light.
• Solutions(pdf) to Quiz I.
• The motor kits were distributed on Monday after break. These details include a desription of what it is all about and a description of a motor design.
• Here is the 2007 grade calculator! (an excel spreadsheet) Simply fill in your current grades, estimates for the final and total bonus points, and the calculator will give your estimated grade. If you leave the Quiz II or future problem set scores blank, then the computation is based on your current average. Thanks to Tom M for correcting an error in an earlier version!
• Check out this comic on resonance!
• The Electrostatic Model Builder can be dowloaded here. The current version requires a PC. Thanks to Brian Collett for this brilliant app!
• The Week 6 Bonus can be turned in at any point during the semester. It is worth a maximum of 2 Bonus Points.
• To find the Phet electric hockey go to the PhET simulations page link on Electricity, Magnets and Circuits and then on the electric hockey.
• The 2007 Coulomb data is here!! Here is a link to an Excel spreadsheet containing the in-class measurements. Thanks to Chelsea for the data.
• See a movie of a wine glass oscillating and then shattering.
• For more on ocean waves try this link.
• Waves in spacetime! LIGO (a nice overview by an undergrad at Macalester), interviews with gravity wave folks, and a quicktime movie of a binary system.
• Animations of different types of wave motions.
• The Maple Demos: Try downloading the files to your computer then load them when running Maple via Critix.
  • Simple movie of sinusiodal waves
  • Interference demo
  • Superposition and Fourier Series: Note the corrected square wave animation
• Here is an example Quiz I. This example quiz is a bit on the long side but gives you idea of the range of problems. I have also posted a one page review.
• Ooops! The solutions for Week 2 had some nasty typos. Here is the corrected page 2 of the solutions. The corrections are shown in red.
• Here's PhET wave demo. (The broken link is fixed.)
• The link for the sig fig exercise from Week 1 is here.
• Oscillations on a Slinky? Interested in studying the massive spring problem? Stop by and we can get started on a simplified version.
• Here is thePhET spring mass-on-a-spring demo. Enjoy!
• In lecture on Monday Jan 15 we will study a mass on a spring. I've posted notes on deriving the simple harmonic motion equation without moving the origin to the equilibrium position.
• We will discuss lots of material this semester. Here is a three page (is it possible?) review.

Labs (pdf):