So I'm torn about what to do on Thursday. Therefore, I'm going to let you vote - we can continue with what's in Ch. 16 & 17 (which is probably easier) or do one of two other topics which are a bit more challenging. All three are very relevant topics you *will* see again, so in that sense there is no wrong answer ...
We should continue on with wave motion, but we did cover enough that we could pick up the missing bits during dead week - what is left is mostly pretty straightforward. I suspect that if you read the rest of Ch. 16 and parts of Ch. 17 you can pick most of it up on your own - there is not a huge amount of depth there.
We could also go a little deeper into resonance, which we only touched on. This would involve looking at driven oscillations and expanding our investigation of damping. I think this option is more challenging, but probably a bit more fun.
A third option is to look at coupled oscillations. This is not unrelated to the outstanding material on standing waves, and would get into things like synchronization of oscillators, the speed of sound in materials, and Fourier analysis of complicated waves.
Only the first option is really covered in the textbook; none of these three would show up in any serious way on the final. Vote in the poll at right if you have a strong interest one way or another; I'll lecture on whichever topic has the most votes as of Wednesday evening.
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