Tuesday's class

Today we'll go over some review questions, and spend an hour or so practicing for the rocket competition on Thursday.

Also, I had completely forgotten about Exam III solutions until one of you reminded me in the comments ... I'll get on that and have something for you by Thursday at the latest, along with solutions to the example problems from last week. The end of the sememster is proving a bit more painful than expected, so I am a bit behind ... apologies.

I have put up some very silly flyers to advertise our little contest. If you feel so inclined, you can do some of your own advertising as well. A number of faculty and staff members have expressed an interest in coming to watch the competition, mainly because they think what you've been up to is very neat. Probably, they are jealous.

(I may have mentioned this to the University Relations office. There might be local press.)

Finally, I'll post directions to L107 Shelby soon. You can find a handy map here. Note that you are going to L107, which is not the same as plain old 107. (Grab the 'emergency evacuation plan' map, it is actually much clearer. And possibly quite relevant, one never knows.)

Today's class ... probably

I am mulling over a change of plans. On one hand, we should do more thermodynamics. On the other hand, you will all end up taking it again anyway ...

So here's my thought: if you agree to do a bit of reading on your own and take a short multiple-choice quiz on Ch. 18 on Friday, we'll spend tomorrow doing final exam review instead. Nothing we covered after Exam III is on the final exam, so this is a reasonable gamble for you to take, I think.

Anyway: tomorrow you have a choice - lecture on heat and thermodynamics, or do practice problems for the final. Since our PH125 Deathwatch is in its final stages, here's what the rest of our time looks like:

This week:
Thurs: practice or thermo + concept test + rocket testing
Fri: pending your vote for Thurs, possibly a thermo quiz. Post-mortem on the concept test (i.e., where are you as a whole having the most trouble). After thinking about Crito's comments & link, I'll also point out the ones I thought were tricky and why ... where does intuition seem to fail?

Dead Week:
Tues: final exam review, dry run for rocket competition
Thurs: rocket competition
Fri: no class

Exam review session

How about 7pm, Monday 13th April, in our normal classroom.

I'll go over some example problems and more details on what precisely will be covered. Come with questions.

Tomorrow's class

Tomorrow, we will begin Ch. 15, "Oscillations," and continue with this material for the rest of the week. Start reading :-)

We will defer Ch. 14 on fluids until the end of the semester, for two reasons. First, the material is a bit fluffy at the level presented in the text. It will be nicer to cover this during our last week, when the PH125 Deathwatch begins. Second, I think it is more logically consistent to move on to oscillations now that we have covered all the core topics in Mechanics.

Next week, we'll begin Ch. 16, "Waves I" ... and the week after that is Exam III (April 14).