Fall week 3 assignments

Physical Systems 1998-99
with E.J. Zita

Reading this week:

• Finish Sagan Ch.6-7, 12-14
• Start Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions"?
• Mechanics: Ch.2, start Ch.8
• Grossman: Sec. 10.4-5 (ordinary and exact DiffEq), 5.3 (gradient, int. factor)

 

Prepare: Over the weekend, you and your team prepared a study guide to focus another team's learning. Pick a couple of good problems on your section of the text for us to do as homework.

Do: Give the study guide you prepared to the appropriate team.  Get your study guide from another team, and use it to prepare your part of tomorrow's class.

Due:   Tell Zita which HW problems you chose, and where to find the study guide your team developed on a web page or shared folder.  Make sure all authors are credited, and I'll make a link to your guide, and post the homework everyone chose.
 

Prepare:  Work with your study guide to prepare about 30 minutes of material for class today.

Do:  Please ask the class the motivating questions on your study guide as part of your presentation.  This can increase their engagement in the material, and can help you tailor your presentation to your audience.

Due:

• Please, each team member give Zita your rough notes in addition to your polished study guide.  This helps me see your learning process.  Significiant differences between the first and the final version, especially on your responses to questions, reassure me that the material is surprising you in fruitful ways.
• Also, your library research topic is due...
• First DiffEq homework:
• Drill on your own (not to turn in:  10.1 # 1-23, 10.3 # 1-21)
• Solutions and graphs for your favorite two of these:  10.3 # 4, 7, 10, 13, 15, 16, 18-21
• Complete solutions for 10.2 # 9, 13, 16, 19
• Describe in words a situation from your life that might also be describable in the language of differential equations.  What might the relevant variables and parameters be?
 Don't worry about writing an equation for the situation yet, but think about what boundary conditions or initial conditions might be necessary to more completely specify the problem.
        As this quarter progresses, I'll help you develop this into a tractable differential equations problem that you can solve.
 

Prepare:  Please bring an ad or brief article from popular press on a topic relevant to our readings, in addition to your one-page response paper.  (Bring two copies of your paper and you can refer to one in seminar.)

Do:   Seminar... show me what worked well last week. Back up your references to Sagan with quotes and page numbers.

Due:  Your ad or article, plus a copy of your paper to turn in at the beginning of seminar.
 

Do:  We'll show each other how to use math software in the CAL, such as Mathematica, MathCad and Excel.
 

Wednesday: Overview: Advanced Library Research workshop - required

Prepare: Review the list of articles you've been gathering about your library research project.  Identify either an article or two that you'd like help tracking down, or a gap in your list that you'd like help filling.

Do: Meet Frank Motley by the reference desk for a discussion of advanced library research techniques.  Work together to either track down the article(s) you've been looking for or to find out about more good articles on your topic.

Due:  After the workshop, prepare a draft bibliography of articles useful for your library research project.  Include full author list, title, and journal name, date, and page.  Write a couple of sentences summarizing the article in terms your classmates could understand, and also write a sentence about the reliability of the journal/article.  (Your formal bibliography will be due as a web page in a couple of weeks.)
   You may submit one bibliography for each team.  Include a discussion of each team member's contribution to the work.    Email your bibliography to Zita sometime today.
 

Prepare:

Do:

Due:
 
 

Prepare:

Do:

Due:

Most of you did basically fine, unless you got a late start or worked alone.  All of you can do fine, if you:

• start early, working out a first draft on your own
• then work together on tricky spots
• write up a polished solution representing your own best understanding.  If part of your work depends on something you  learned from a classmate, please credit her or him appropriately (as, you will notice, authors of published articles credit their peers for help).  Please do not turn in scratch notes - keep them for your portfolio, if you like.

• I can read and understand your work
• You can come back to it in a year or two and make sense of it.  Important ingredients, to these ends:

• describe what's going on (what do you know?  what are you looking for?)
• label your variables and parameters (x = range.. v = impact speed...)
• discuss your methods and thought processes.

• Include UNITS for every physical quantity with a number.  Check units to make sure your equations are consistent.
• Sketch  GRAPHS to check intermediate results and to demonstrate your methods (such as graphical solutions of tricky equations.)
• Please resist magic ("it can be shown...", " a miracle occurs...")  Basically, show your work.

• It will be easier to read if you write on only one side of the paper.  Leave the other side to make notes to yourself  or add sketches later.
• If you add notes, e.g. from my class presentations, to your homework before you turn it in, please do this in a different color pen!

• 4 for completeness of the overall assignment.  3 is a problem, and 2 is a serious problem.
• 3 each for basically good work on two hard problems.  3 does NOT mean PERFECT, it just means that any  incompleteness or errors are not fatal. 2 means there's a relatively serious lack that you should resolve for yourself right away, and 1 means you tried but need to rework it from scratch, or you are liable to get behind.
• The rest of the problems are UNGRADED (except scanned for completeness).  They could be right or wrong.
• This scoring system tends to overestimate the work done.  For example, "9/10" does not necessarily mean 90% of the work is correct.
• You should check all homework yourself by sitting down with my solutions (on reserve in the library) and comparing your methods and details with mine.  It is easy to convince yourself you understand after the fact.  A better test would be to see if you can recreate a solution independent of notes, after studying the solutions.  If you find I made a mistake, please bring it to my attention - it happens sometimes!

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