PHYS 350: Classical Mechanics

News:

• Toy Week is here! Please do not hesitate to ask questions about the dynamics. Your presentations should all refer to the new material we encountered this semester.
• I have posted a review sheet and a bunch of example problems for the final in Extras.

Course Info:

Weekly Guides (pdf):

Extras:

• More on the Reynolds number from NASA.
• There is a very nice applet on galaxy rotation curves here, hosted by Case Western Reserve University's Department of Astronomy. You get to try fit to data using disk and halo mass models.
• In class we discussed galaxy rotation curves. There are more at this site.
• The "Hamilton Standard Beach Ball" Data: mass (empty) 115 g, radius 19 cm.
• Henri Poincare in a 1903 essay Science and Method writes "If we knew exactly the laws of nature and the situation of the universe at the initial moment, we could predict exactly the situation of that same universe at a succeeding moment. but even if it were the case that the natural laws had no longer any secret for us, we could still only know the initial situation approximately. If that enabled us to predict the succeeding situation with the same approximation, that is all we require, and we should say that the phenomenon had been predicted, that it is governed by laws. But it is not always so; it may happen that small differences in the initial conditions produce very great ones in the final phenomena. A small error in the former will produce an enormous error in the latter. Prediction becomes impossible, and we have the fortuitous phenomenon."
• Here is a link to a site with applets and activities showing the least action "in action" in simple mechanical problems.
• A numerical demo for the damped, driven pendulum.
• In the Taylor problem 12.14, the missing value for gamma is 1.084.
• The Jodrell Bank Observatory news release about a massive companion to a pulsar mentioned in the Week 7 guide. Note that more recent observations suggest that the compaion is not a solar mass black hole.
• Here is the rope wrap data (in .xlsx format).
• The perfect storm as described by NOAA.
• I have compiled a short review outlining the topics we discussed. Here is the potpourri of old and new final problems.

• The University of Guelph has a lovely and very short Foucault pendulum. They also host a set of web pages on the phenomenon, including details.