HW 4, revised due date

The remaining HW4 problems were originally planned to be due on Friday 7 March. However, I think this week we spent (arguably) too much time on the rocket launchers and not enough time on problems. As a result, I suspect that the problems you have left may seem a bit too difficult to finish by Friday.

Therefore, I'll postpone the due date of the remaining (non-daily) problems until Monday 10 March, and I'll plan to go over the HW problems in Friday's class to get you started.

Also, as it turns out, XKCD has pointed you toward one of the solutions already. The author has a degree in physics, so this is the rare case where you can actually trust a webcomic to help you with your physics homework. (Seriously, read XKCD.com and what-if.xkcd.com, they are a valuable use of your time.)

Homework typo

I just realized that there is a typo in the due dates. Problems 3 & 4 are due today, but problems 5-10 are not due until Wednesday, 19 Feb (not today). 

Women in Physics & Society of Physics Students meeting

A opportunity for stargazing with cookies and tea tomorrow night. Open to all interested.

We invite all women interested in physics & astronomy
(undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs and research assistants
associated with science & engineering) to our
Joint Meeting with SPS: Spring Meeting with Stargazing
Wednesday February 5th, 7:00-9:00 PM
223 Gallalee Building and dome on top of Gallalee Hall

Please join us for some interesting discussions with cookies and tea under the stars.
We are looking forward to seeing you
Prof. Claudia Mewes, Prof. Preethi Nair, Prof. Dawn Williams

Lab for 5 Feb

Tomorrow, we'll do a relatively simple lab on friction.

Additionally, we'll start to talk about work & energy, and figure out some better problem-solving methods that are less tedious than what you've dealt with so far. If there is time, I'll sketch out the solutions to the exam problems, but that may have to wait until Friday.

Given that I was out sick yesterday, and am not feeling great today, I am not sure when the exams will be graded. I'm hoping for Friday, but Monday at the latest.

The Snowpocalypse continues

We'll have to play this by ear, but here's the current plan:

• HW due Friday by midnight, presuming UA is open Friday. 
• Friday's class: work homework problems, review for the exam. 
• Exam on Monday, but taking only ~50 minutes. We'll spend the rest of the class period working problems and discussing new material.

Given that it is supposed to be in the high 40's tomorrow at least, I fully expect we'll have class on Friday. I don't think we'll know whether UA will be open tomorrow (Thurs) until ~4pm today.  UA is closed Thursday. Presuming we have class on Friday, we'll spend most of that time working on homework and getting you ready for an exam on Monday.

Snowpocalypse 2014

I'm going to make a wild leap and assume classes will be held tomorrow.

On the outside chance that they are not, the HW due date and exam will shift by one class. Specifically, if there are no classes tomorrow, the HW will be due on Friday and the exam will move to Monday. Again, so long as classes are still on tomorrow, the HW is due Wednesday and the exam will be Friday.

Right. Better get back to shoveling my car out of the snow drifts so I can stock up on bread and milk.

Field trip opportunity. Seriously.

I would like to point out an opportunity for a 3 week field trip to Yellowstone for under-represented students in the sciences.

More info can be found here:

http://physics.ua.edu/news/Yellowstone_FieldCourse_Brochure.pdf

The deadline to apply is 1 Feb 2014. The application is on the last page of the brochure linked above

Next HW

Owing to the long weekend, I'm delaying putting out the second HW until Wednesday. Seems more realistic. I should have HW1 solutions out at that time as well. 

In case you are interested

UA Society of Physics Students First Meeting of the Semester!

When: 6:30 PM Wednesday January 22nd

Where: Gallalee Room 200

What:

• Discuss semester activities 
• Watch The PHD Movie

Course intro slides

Here are the slides I'll use at the start of the first class to go over the course format, etc.

Welcome to PH125 / Spring 2014

This is where you will find all the information you need for PH125 this semester. If you are in to such things, subscribe to the atom feed, it will make things easier. 

Be sure to note the handy links on the left sidebar. In particular, note that all course content from Spring 2009 is available, including old homework and solutions. The Feynman Lectures on Physics are also a great resource in addition to your textbook.

Your syllabus is already online for your perusal; read it carefully!

Reminder: no recitation today

Also, I will hold a review session Monday evening some time. Still working out the details, I'll post here when everything is settled.

Physics Majors event

Just FYI, since a number of you are physics majors ...

---

All PHYSICS MAJORS!!!

Do you actually know other physics majors?? Yeah, that's what I thought. So come to the meet AND greet.

FREE FOOD! Yes, completely free. In fact, it will even be surrounded by nerds. So come.

DETAILS:
Who - YOU....hopefully...
What - Meet the other people who share your uniquely awesome interests
When - FRIDAY, as in THIS FRIDAY of dead week. which is May 1st, just fyi. 3:00-5:00pm
Where - Room 109 in Gallalee (obviously)
Why - because Tara and Ted were upset that we didn't know all of you

So, it'll be awesome, especially once you get there :)

-Your Fellow Physics Majors, Tara and Ted - and kind of the Society of Physics Students, kinda -

Quiz tomorrow (Friday)

Reminder: there is a 5-question multiple-choice quiz on Ch. 18 tomorrow.

The content of the quiz will be restricted to the sample problems in Ch. 18 - if you can do those, you are good to go.

In addition we'll go over some practice problems for the final (the ones I put on the board today).

Thursday's class

Thursday, we'll be doing our requisite post-assessment. Remember that concept test you took at the beginning of the semester? Basically, we'll take it again and see if you learned anything :-)

It should take about 20min, and there will be grade-related incentives for doing well.

We'll also go over a bit more thermodynamics (heat and energy), and leave some time for you to do some 'practice shots' for the rocket competition.

Exam III grading

I hope to have the exams graded and back to you by Friday ... I would say Thursday, but I have a visiting grad student coming in tomorrow. 

In any event: you'll have them before the weekend if all goes according to plan. Don't freak out, it looks pretty good so far. I will scale the exams if necessary.

Most likely on Thursday we'll go over the solutions in class.

Today's office hours

Today I have a meeting that cannot be avoided, and it overlaps the posted office hours ...

If you want to come by today, I'll be in my Gallalee office from 5pm until the review starts.

Thursday's lecture

Ok, continuing with waves (Ch. 16/17) has won the poll ... so that's what I will talk about tomorrow.

That implies you should look over Ch. 16 and 17 before class if you can.

Thursday 9 April 2009

By the way: short quiz on Thursday. It will not present a problem if you have read Ch. 16.

Really, it will be easy. Just a heads-up.

Thursday's class

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.