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Syllabus for Physics 130, spring 2005

Ben Crowell, Fullerton College contacting me Please make use of my oce hours! Working with students one-on-one is one of my favorite parts of my job. Several of us on the physics faculty have decided to do our oce hours in room 416P, and to make ourselves available to each others students to help them with physics. This room, used as a walk-in clinic, is called Als Place, after Albert Einstein. My own oce hours are the ones listed with the initials BC. Mon Tue Wed Thu web page time required required materials 7:30-8:30 GS, 8:30-9 BC, 10-12 LB, 12-1 GS 8:30-9 BC, 11-12 BC, 12-1 LB, 5-5:30 BC 7:30-8:30 GS, 8:30-9 BC, 12-1 GS, 2-4 LB 8:30-9 BC, 11:30-12 BC, 4:30-5:30 BC

www.lightandmatter.com/area3phys130.html You should expect to put in at least 8 hours per week outside of class. The texts are Crowell, Discover Physics; Hewitt, Conceptual Physics, 8th ed.; and Gardner, Relativity Simply Explained. You can buy Hewitt and Gardner at the bookstore, and download Discover Physics from http://www.lightandmatter.com/area1dp.html. 3 Youll also need a cheap calculator, a bound 10 7 4 -inch lab notebook with graph paper pages (near the art supplies at the bookstore), a metric ruler, a free FC computer account, and your own e-mail (see p. 4 for more about free e-mail and how to e-mail me). I will give an automatic F in the class (without the option of taking a W) to any student who cheats or breaks the rules on a quiz or exam, plagiarizes, falsies data, makes use of another students work without that students permission, turns in homework answers that originated from my solution handouts, or is intellectually dishonest in any other way that is serious, premeditated, or ongoing. The college may also take action. (See page 8 for denitions of terms like plagiarism.) In less serious cases of academic dishonesty, or in cases of cooperation that falls outside the guidelines given on page 8, I will assign a zero on the assignment. This includes cases of two students submitting homework assignments or lab reports that contain identical or nearly identical work.

academic honesty policy

Is this the right class for you?

Fullerton College oers four dierent physics sequences: Physics 130 Satises a gen ed requirement for people who arent science or engineering majors. This course is also good preparation for the 200-level courses if you havent had high school physics. Physics 205-206 Satises the requirement for life science majors planning to transfer to some Cal State campuses, including CSUF. The prerequisite is Math 142. Physics 210-211 Satises the requirement for life science majors transferring to Cal State or UC. The corequisite for 210 is Math 150A. Physics 221-223 A rigorous calculus-based course for physical science and engineering majors.

getting started

The rst two meetings are a little dierent from all the others. From 9:00 to 11:00 at the rst meeting, do the things listed below. From 11:45 to 11:50, there will be a reading quiz. Heres a quick summary of the stu you need to do by 11:45 1. Read pages 1-10 of this syllabus. 2. Read ch. 1 and lab 1a from Discover Physics (handed out in class). Note that I will not hand out the rest of the book for free, and youll do the rest of the reading for the semester at home, not in class. 3. Log in to Spotter, and try editing your synthesis to see how it works. 4. If you have time, get acquainted with the other people in your group, and get started on the homework and lab. Heres what you need to do by Wednesday 1. Get everything listed under required materials above. The bound notebook will be used for taking your raw data in lab. You need to print all of Discover Physicsat this point, not just the rst few chapters. This will only cost about $8 to do in one of the campus computer labs. I will check at the fourth class meeting whether you have the whole book; this book check is worth 20 points. For printing Discover Physics, youll need Acrobat Reader 5 or later; version 4 garbles the gures. I think the FC computer labs have version 5, but the library has 4. As a test, you may want to print the rst page of chapter 2, and look at gure a to see if the text in it is garbled. 2. Add notes on the reading to your synthesis (see p. 3). 3. Attempt the assigned homework problems (see p. 10; the starred problem is for extra credit). If there are any problems you cant gure out, write down as much as you were able to do, and come to class prepared to discuss the problem with me or with the other students. 4. If you dont already have e-mail, get an account. (The free accounts at yahoo.com are pretty good, and you can access your account through a web browser from anywhere, so you dont need a home computer or internet access at home. You dont have to answer their nosy questions truthfully.) If you dont already have an FC computer account, go to one of the campus computer labs and get one. If you havent done so already, log in to Spotter, click on account, and set your e-mail address.

organization

This class is organized in an unusual way. Educational research shows that when physics is taught in the traditional way, with an emphasis on lectures and memorization, most students do very poorly at learning concepts. In particular, they often leave the course still believing in many of the misconceptions they came in with. (For example, they think that a heavy rock falls faster than a light one.) The teachers who get better results are those who use an approach known in edspeak as active learning: lecturing is deemphasized, and class time is used for activities in which the students take an active role.

Frankly, active learning is harder work for you but its worth it! There will be no lectures in this class. Your time in the classroom will be evenly split between labs and activities; at any given time, half the students will be doing one and half will be doing the other. Youll typically do the labs independently, not in groups. Activities will include small-group discussions of the discussion questions in the text, worksheets, and discussing any homework problems that you werent able to gure out with me or with other students. work outside of class As usual with a college class, a minimum of two hours a week of work outside of class is expected for every unit. Since this is a four-unit class, that means a minimum of about eight hours. This will consist of reading, synthesizing, writing up labs, and doing the homework problems. Although the total amount of reading is small (about 500 pages for the whole semester), youll need to read slowly and think deeply about what you read. Its not like a lecture class where you can skip the reading, come to class, and expect to hear everything told to you verbally. If you havent done the reading, you wont even be able to do the labs and activities. syntheses I wrote the text, Discover Physics, specically for use with active learning techniques. In particular, many important ideas and equations are not given in the text. Instead, youre going to discover them yourself in lab. Because of this intentional incompleteness of the book, youre going to have to synthesize (assemble, organize, and make sense of) what youve learned from the book and in lab. Youre also going to be reading Hewitt and Gardner, which means more information to put in the mix. The good news is that the fundamental principles of physics are actually very simple, and will easily t in a couple of pages of notes. Youre required to maintain a set of notes, called your synthesis, online. Every week, Ill insert comments in your synthesis, and grade you on its quality and on whether its up to date. You can also use a printout of your synthesis on the quizzes and the nal. To edit your synthesis, you log in to Spotter and click on edit, then on synthesis. There are instructions on the screen about how to format it, and how to save your work. Your synthesis for each week is due electronically by 3:00 on Friday. Dos and donts: Do print out your synthesis every week, so you can use it on the quizzes and have it to refer to while working on the homework. Do eliminate trivia and unnecessary details. Do respond to my comments by going back and making the appropriate changes. Do organize your synthesis by topics, not chronologically. Dont segregate your notes from Hewitt, Gardner, my book, and lab. Synthesizing is like cooking. If youre serving cookies, you dont hand your guest a plate with one pile of our, one pile of sugar, and a raw egg. Dont use phrases or sentences from the book. Your synthesis should be in your own words. (And if you do this without quotation marks or attribution, its plagiarism.)

Do add notes on the main result of each weeks lab work, even if you arent done yet with the writeup(s). Dont recap datails from your lab that arent of any broader importance. Dont skip a week if theres been lab but no reading. Spotter Spotter is software Ive written to take care of various things in this class. Youll use it to edit your synthesis, to check your grade in the class, to send me e-mail, and to check your answers to homework problems that have numerical answers. If you choose to, you can make your e-mail address available to other students in the class through Spotter, so you can get in touch with each other. You dont need to install Spotter on your own computer. You just run it through a web browser. You can use it from anywhere that you have internet access, including the computers in class. To log in to Spotter, go to the classs web page (see page 1 of the syllabus), and click on the link. The rst time you log in to Spotter, it will ask you to choose a password and enter an e-mail address. There are a couple of reasons why its important to put a valid e-mail address into Spotter. For one thing, Ill get your address from Spotter, and Ill often send important announcements via e-mail. Also, if you forget your password, the mechanism for resetting it involves e-mail; if you forget your password and also havent entered a valid e-mail address, youll never be able to log in to Spotter again. (Your password is encrypted on my server, so theres no way I can nd out for you what it is, even if I want to.) Dont worry about spam. Your e-mail address will not be visible to anyone except me and the other students. Nobody will be able to see it without a valid Spotter account. (If you want to, you can even hide it from the other students.) e-mail drops and participation You can e-mail me any time. Just log in to Spotter and click on e-mail. Title 5 of the California Administrative code, section 58004, states that a student may be dropped if he or she is no longer participating in the course. The Fullerton College catalog also states: After a student accumulates an excessive number of unexcused absences in any class (more than the number of times the class meets per week), an instructor may le an Instructor Drop Form . . . The absences may be consecutive or nonconsecutive. To dene participation, our division has a recommended set of criteria, written by a committee consisting of dean Allen Brown, Dr. Jacob Sapiro, and the colleges registrar, and among these criteria are: 1 Arrive on time to class and stay the entire class period. 3 Turn in all assignments on time and complete. 7 Take all assigned quizzes and exams. Since written work is due at every class meeting, my method for recording participation is to check whether you turn in the written work on time. I do not give you credit for participation if you show up without turning in the work. Your participation will aect your grade, and very poor participation may also cause me to drop you involuntarily:

perfect participation all semester incomplete participation during 1 incomplete participation during 2 incomplete participation during 3 incomplete participation during 4

week weeks weeks weeks

+20 points +10 points 10 points 60 points involuntary drop (or 150 points if its past the drop deadline)

Standards for written work to count for participation Homework: To count for participation, you must either get at least 1 point on your assignment, or else attempt every problem. It only counts as attempting the problem if what you write (1) shows that you read the question and also (2) records some steps toward the solution, or explains what you didnt understand or how you got stuck. Examples of answers that wouldnt count for participation: Number 7: I dont know. Number 7: I dont understand. Examples that would count: Number 7: The problem says that the acceleration isnt constant, but I dont understand what equation to use if the acceleration isnt constant. Number 7: First I calculated 2+2=5, then, . . . Lab reports: Either of the following counts for participation: (1) Getting a score of at least 1 point. (2) Turning in a lab writeup with complete data, written in the format described below. lab reports You turn in lab reports electronically. Log in to Spotter, click on edit, then click on the name of the lab. In a week with two labs, the rst report is due by noon Saturday, and the second one by noon on Tuesday of the following week. In a week with one lab, the report is due by noon on Tuesday of the following week. I will sometimes choose a particularly good writeup as a best of breed lab, which is worth 20 points of extra credit for the student who wrote it. The rst section of your report should be a summary of your data; if something went wrong in your analysis, I may need this in order to gure out what was going on. The second section of your report is your abstract. The abstract is a summary of what you found out in this lab, and why anyone would care about it. The abstract is not a statement of the goals of the lab those are in the lab manual. The abstract is the part you write last, after youve done all your analysis and gured out all your conclusions. The reason it comes rst is the same reason an abstract comes rst in a scientic paper: youre telling the reader why they should bother reading the rest of the paper, and letting her know what it is youre going to try to convince her of. Dont do multiple abstracts for dierent parts of the lab, because the abstract is supposed to function as a summary. The rest of the report should be organized in whatever way you think is eective, for that particular lab. Its function is to convince the reader that youve really proved the things you claimed in the abstract.

Heres a condensed version of what a lab report would look like while you were editing it in Spotter: =Data *size of Dr. Crowells ego = 37 cm (diameter) ... =Abstract In this lab, I demonstrated that Dr. Crowell had the biggest ego on the Fullerton College faculty, and possibly in the world. My results, based on x-ray measurements, could be confirmed by... =Discussion ... grading You are not competing with the other students. Here are the standards: points 80% 70% 60% 50% grade A B C D

Approximately 1000 points are possible (so, e.g., you need about 800 points for an A): quizzes book check long labs with writeups short labs with writeups long check-o labs short check-o labs homework problems syntheses exams 66 questions @ 3 points each 20 points 7 @ 25 points each 4 @ 17 points each 3 @ 14 points each 9 @ 11 points each 64 @ 2 point each 16 @ 5 points each 3 @ 63 points each 198 20 175 68 42 99 128 80 189

I may make adjustments to these numbers. extra credit You can get extra credit by doing the starred homework problems (up to 5 points each), or by getting a best of breed award on a lab (see above). checking your grade To nd out your current grade in the course, go to the classs web page, click on the link to Spotter, log in, and click on grades. If you notice that Ive made a simple bookkeeping error in recording your grades, please e-mail me about it. If you think I graded something unfairly, come see me about it during my oce hours or write me a note and put it in my box. Please dont use class time or e-mail for this. free advice reading Of course you should read actively, but thats easier said than done. Dont bother highlighting highlighting is useless for reading science textbooks. Take notes in your notebook as you read. When theres something you dont understand, write a note about it and come back to it later. Once

youre done reading, try to organize your thoughts. What was important? What wasnt? Whats the logical ow of the argument? Now go online and add some text to the end of your synthesis le, attempting to tie everything up in a nice package. One good active reading exercise is to take some general principle and try to nd your own example of how to apply it. This is especially helpful if you can nd an example where it seems surprising or wrong, or where youre not sure whether the assumptions behind the general principle are valid. Research has shown that many of students conceptual problems with physics occur because the principles of physics are surprising and counterintuitive, so when the principle is encountered in a new situation, they dont even think to apply it because it wouldnt seem to make sense. doing the homework problems Many liberal arts students are turned o by the type of homework problems assigned in high school courses that emphasize memorization and cookbook-style problem solving. OK boys and girls, for Friday I want you to do problems 1-99 odd. None of the problems in Discover Physics are written for robots. Some are easy and some are quite hard, and some will require creativity and critical thinking. The total number of problems is relatively small, and Ive tried to make every problem count I hope none of them feel like a waste of your time. Whether or not youre convinced by my sales pitch, you need to do the problems, and you need to get them right. If youre not getting them right, then youre not learning what you were supposed to learn. You need to get started on them early. The time available in class for discussing them and getting help is only sucient for debugging, not for starting the whole homework assignment from scratch. Make sure to bring a printout of your synthesis with you to every class; otherwise you dont have the information you need in order to work on the homework. rules rules rules nal The nal exam will consist of four or ve essay questions. You can bring a printout of your synthesis. You must do the nal completely independently and without communicating with other students. Calculators and dictionaries are allowed. If you leave the nal for any reason other than a serious health problem, you may not come back and work on the exam any more. It is up to you to go to the bathroom before starting the exam. In the event of a serious health problem, you must tell me why you are leaving, go directly to the student health center, and bring back a note from the health center verifying the health problem. homework Whenever you give an answer to a homework question, you are responsible for explaining it. I will not give any credit for an answer without any explanation. When answering numerical questions, pay attention to signicant gures. What that means is that you should write the result with the right number of digits of precision to show how accurately you really know it. Example: I weigh 140 lbs. To convert this into kilograms, I divide 140 by 2.2 on my calculator. The calculator shows the answer as 63.6363636363 kg, but thats stupid, because the calculator is stupid it doesnt know what its doing, so it makes it sound as if Id been weighed by the worlds most

accurate balance at the National Bureau of Standards. Since Im limited by the accuracy of the two numbers I started with, my answer should be rounded o to 64 kg. quizzes and questions You should expect a quiz on any day when there is textbook reading assigned, or when there has been a lab to prepare. Quizzes will last 5 minutes, and will start promptly at the beginning of class. Quizzes are closed book, and are to be done independently. When taking a quiz, you can use a printout of your synthesis, but you cannot use any hand-written notes. In a week with a long lab, all students will be quizzed on the lab reading at the rst meeting, even though half the class wont actually be doing the lab until the second meeting of the week. cooperation Cooperation is good, as long as you do it right. I have some specic rules on cooperation, spelled out below. In general, problems come up when there is an unequal relationship between a student who is doing well and one who is doing poorly. If youre struggling with the class, it may seem like a good deal if you can get what amounts to free tutoring from another student. However, tutoring is dicult to do well, and can easily degenerate into mindless copying. If you want free tutoring, get it in Als Place from me or one of the other instructors, or at the FC tutoring center! Remember that you can e-mail me for help, but your question needs to be very specic; if I have to e-mail you back for more clarication, then youll probably run out of time. homework Discussion of homework with other students is one of the main things I expect you to do in class. However, you may not turn in work that is identical, paraphrased, or extremely similar, either in whole or in part. In such cases, I will give zeroes to everyone who turned in overly similar work, regardless of who copied from whom. lab reports Most labs are to be done individually. Youll have your own setup, your own data, your own analysis, and your own writeup. Its OK to discuss the lab with other students. Some labs will be done in groups of two. Youll have the same setup, and your data will consist of the same numbers and observations, but each of you needs to write her raw data in her own notebook (dont assign one person to be a secretary), and youre responsible for your own analysis and writeup. A good rule of thumb is that if two of you are going to discuss a calculation, one of you should close his/her notebook. denitions relating to academic honesty Cheating or breaking the rules on a test (or quiz) means communicating with anyone else but me during the test, using materials youre not allowed to use, getting information about the contents of the test from other people, giving other people information about the contents of the test, or doing anything else that gives you or someone else an unfair advantage or creates the possibility or appearance of doing so. Plagiarism means using someone elses work without giving proper credit. A paraphrase of someone elses work is plagiarism if you dont give proper credit; it doesnt matter whether you use exactly the same words or not.

disasters, alien abductions, etc.

missing a lab If you miss a lab, you can only make it up in one of my other lab classes over the next few days. Makeups are only for rare, exceptional circumstances, not, e.g., for cases where you missed the lab because you aked out, or didnt nish lab in time because you chose to use class time for homework. Except in cases of emergencies or unforseeable circumstances (e.g., your car breaks down on the way to school), you may only make up two labs over the course of the semester. If you make up a lab with a writeup, the writeup is still due at the same time as for everyone else. If you make up a lab that would ordinarily have been a check-o lab, you have to do a typed writeup on paper instead, and the writeup is due by the beginning of the class 7 days after the date when you would normally have done the lab. If you want to make up a lab, you should leave a note for Hanh Pham, the physics technician, in her mailbox at the natural science division.

Schedule
Symbols used in the schedule:
i d w c This is an individual lab. Twelve students will be doing the lab at once, with twelve setups. Students will double up for this lab. There are only six setups. A lab writeup is required. All your data should go in your bound lab notebook. This is a check-o lab. Youll probably write most of your data in the lab manual itself. If Im satised with your work by the end of the lab period, we both sign my notebook to record the fact that youre entitled to the points.

Some weeks have a schedule with two short labs. The week is broken up into four 75-minute blocks. X students do lab-activity-lab-activity, and Y students do activity-lab-activity-lab. Other weeks have a dierent schedule, with one long lab. The week has two three-hour blocks. X students do lab-activity, Y students activity-lab. The lab reading is included in a quiz given Monday.

Jan. 19 Jan. 24 Jan. 31 Feb. 7 Feb. 14 Feb. 21 Feb. 28 Mar. 7 Mar. 14 Mar. 28 Apr. 4 Apr. 11 Apr. 18 Apr. 25 May 2 May 9 May 16 May 25

W M W M W M W M W M W M W M W M W M W M W M W M W M W M W M W M W W

reading[1] 1 The Rules of the Rules Gardner 1 2 The Ray Model of Light

lab 1a 2a
iw iw

homework[2] Scaling Re. and Time-Rev. Symm.


iw

1:1-4 1:5-6, 2:1-5 2:6-8 2:10-12, 3:1-10

}2b
3.1 Images: Location and Mag. 3.2-3 Real and Virtual, Ang. Mag. Gardner 2 holiday exam 1; bring a bluebook [3] Gardner 3 4.1 Conservation of Mass 4.2 Conservation of Energy; Gardner 4 Hewitt 2, Linear Motion 4.3 Newtons Law of Gravity; Gardner 5 4.4-5 Noether, Mass-Energy 5.1-2 Translation, Inertia; Gardner 6 Hewitt 3, Nonlinear Motion 5.3 Momentum; Gardner 7 Hewitt 4, Newtons Laws Hewitt 5, Momentum; Gardner 9[4] Hewitt 6, Energy exam 2; bring a bluebook [5] 6 Relativity; Hewitt 34, Relativity 7.1 Elec. Interactions; Hewitt 10,21 7.2 Circuits; Gardner 10 Hewitt 22, Electric Current 7.3 Electromagnetism; Gardner 11 Hewitt 23, Magnetism 7.4 Induction; Gardner 12 Hewitt 24, Induction nal, 9-11 am; bring a bluebook

Models of Light

2c dw Speed of Light in Matter 3a ic Images 3b ic A Real Image 3c ic Lenses

}4a }4b }5a }5b }5c }5d

dw dw dw dc dc iw

Conservation Laws Conservation of Energy Interactions Frames of Reference Momentum Angular Momentum

3:11-14 4:1-3 4:4-5 4:6-9 5:1-3 5:4-9 6:1-8

7a 7b ic Electrical Measurements 7c iw Is Charge Conserved? 7d ic Circuits 7e dc Electric Fields 7f ic Magnetic Fields 7g dc Induction 7h ic Light Waves

dw Charge[6]

7:1-2 7:3-4 7:5-8 7:9-11

[1] Reading is from Discover Physicsunless otherwise specied. Gardner 1 means to read chapter 1 of Gardner, and likewise for Hewitt. See page 11 for some notes on Gardner and Hewitt. [2] The number before the colon is the chapter, and the numbers after it are the problems. [3] Exam 1 covers all the reading and labs through Feb. 16, but not refraction. [4] Note that were skipping ch. 8 of Gardner. [5] Exam 2 covers all the reading and labs through April 13, except for relativity. [6] The lab is three hours, and takes up the whole period. Everyone does it the same day. This counts as a long lab.

10

notes on Gardner
Popular science writers have to be a lot more entertaining than authors of textbooks, because they dont have a captive audience! Martin Gardner is a wonderful writer, and I hope youll nd reading Relativity Simply Explained was worth it just because its such a cool book, regardless of the fact that it will also help you with chapters 6 and 7 of Discover Physics.

1 Absolute or Relative?
This whole chapter is really talking about symmetry, but he uses the word relative. On page 10, for example, he discusses how you cant tell whether something has been mirror-reected unless you can compare with something else that hasnt been mirrorreection, and therefore left and right are relative. In ch. of of Discover Physics, I talk about reection symmetry, but Gardner and I are just using dierent words for the same thing. On page 8, he talks about how up and down are relative. This is equivalent to saying that the laws of physics are symmetric under rotation through any angle. That rotational symmetry is what underlies conservation of angular momentum, as investigated in lab 5d. On the very rst page of the chapter, Gardner starts out with the joke about the shipwrecked sailors. I love the story, and its a great way to start the book, but youve already discovered in lab 1a that the scientic content isnt quite right. If you were shrunk, your results in lab 1a would come out dierent! Nature doesnt actually have scaling symmetry. Ultimately, this is because atoms are a particular size, so even if you make a perfect small-scale copy of an object, you cant shrink its atoms. The issue of left-right symmetry is also a little tricky. Gardner oversimplies a little in this chapter when he says that left and right are purely relative. In fact, physicists were astonished to discover in the 1960s that nuclear forces do distinguish between left and right! Gardner knows this, and he even wrote an entire book on the subject, The New Ambidextrous Universe, which I highly recommend.

ativity. Some people, including Gardner, say that mass changes when an object is in motion, according to the same formula as time and space. Other people, including me, say mass always stays the same, but it takes more force to have the same eect on the moving object. Both approaches are really saying the same thing. Its sort of like if you go to a store and they have a big sign saying that every dollar bill is worth $2 in this store. Thats the same as saying everything in the store is on sale for 50% o. As another example, you could say a = 2b or b = a/2, and they mean the same thing. The equation on p. 51 is the one I used to make the tables in section 6.3 of Discover Physics. The famous E = mc2 appears on p. 56, but without much explanation or justication. I gave the same equation in section 4.5 of Discover Physics, also without any justication. Dont worry, Im not trying to ruin your critical thinking skills the reasoning behind the equation is in section 6.3, which youll read in a few weeks.

5 The General Theory of Relativity


The general theory of relativity isnt covered in Discover Physics, so from now on youre reading stu that isnt strictly necessary for this course. I hope pure intellectual curiosity (plus a miniscule amount of extra credit) will motivate you to go on. You do want to know about black holes and the Big Bang, dont you?

7 Tests of General Relativity


This chapter is out of date. The postscript discusses more recent tests. When I was an undergrad in 1984, one of my professors emphasized to me how poorly tested general relativity was (as opposed to special relativity). A lot has changed since then, and general relativity is now on extremely solid ground.

10 Models of the Universe


On p. 134, Gardner discusses the cosmological constant, which Einstein rst introduced as a device that would make a static universe possible. It turned out that the mathematical device didnt work (the static universe would be unstable), and astronomers soon discovered that the universe was expanding, not static. However, since Gardner wrote the book evidence has appeared that there is in fact a cosmological constant, and its making the universe expand faster and faster, rather than slowing down as youd expect due to gravity. This has a depressing implication for the ultimate fate of the universe: innite dilution! Eventually, the universe will consist of individual, isolated atoms, each of which is so far from every other atom that they can never come in contact.

2 The Michelson-Morley Experiment


This chapter introduces a new kind of symmetry: the laws of physics are the same regardless of whether youre moving (provided youre moving in a straight line at constant speed). You might say youre at rest right now, but aliens on another planet would say youre moving very fast as the solar system whizzes through space. We say theyre the ones moving. Theres no way to decide whos right. Discover Physics gets into this in chapter 5. This is a perfectly valid piece of classical physics that people understood long before Einstein. However, Gardner is writing a book about relativity, so he immediately presses on to explain how physicists before Einstein thought there was an exception: they thought that the relative nature of motion only applied to matter, not light. The Michelson-Morley experiment showed that this was incorrect, and it applied to light as well.

11 Quasars, Pulsars, and Black Holes


This chapter is out of date, especially about quasars. Quasars are now fairly well understood. A quasar is a galaxy containing a giant black hole with the mass of millions of suns, and it shines so brightly because the black hole is gobbling up gas and dust. As its food falls into it, friction heats it to extremely high temperatures. Our own galaxy has such a black hole at its center, but, as is typically the case in the present-day universe, it has eaten all the available gas and dust, so it no longer shines. The chapter is also out of date about the evidence for the existence of black holes. Its no longer controversial, for instance, that Cygnus X-1 is a black hole, and the evidence for the black hole at the center of our galaxy is even stronger.

3 The Special Theory of Relativity, Part I


This chapter is like sections 6.1 and 6.2 of Discover Physics, but better written. It deals with the strange behavior of time and space in relativity.

4 The Special Theory of Relativity, Part II


This chapter corresponds to section 6.3 of Discover Physics. There are two inconsistent conventions in use about mass in rel-

12 Beginning and End


I want to make sure you realize that if you belong to almost any

11

mainstream religious denomination, the Big Bang model doesnt contradict your religion. For more information, you might want to read my short pamphlet, God, Evolution, and the Big Bang, http://www.lightandmatter.com/evolution/index.html .

notes on Hewitt
Hewitt is an excellent book in many ways. Although theres too much in it, and I think some chapters are badly written, parts of it are great. Hewitt also has a very down-to-earth style, and gives lots of cool and practical examples, so I think the book will be a helpful complement to my own style, which is admittedly a little abstract. The order of topics in Hewitt is completely dierent from what I use in Discover Physics. Thats why I had you wait until six weeks into the class to start reading Hewitt, so that the topics would be synchronized. Because my approach and Hewitts are so completely dierent, I think youll get a valuable chance here to see the same ideas from two dierent points of view.

temperature of a certain amount of water by a certain amount, Hewitt bases it on the amount of energy transferred when you apply a force of 1 newton over a distance of 1 meter, e.g., by lifting a 1-Newton weight to a position thats 1 meter higher. Our denitions are equivalent: his joule is the same size as my joule.

34 Relativity
Hewitt does electricity and magnetism before relativity, but I do it after. Dont worry about the references to Maxwells laws all you really need to know is that light is a vibration of electric and magnetic elds, like ripples spreading out on a pond. Skip the technical details of the Michelson-Morley experiment (interferometry, etc.).

22 Electric Current
Hewitts potential dierence is what I call a voltage dierence. (My terminology is more common in practical work, his in science.) Skip the section on direct current and alternating current. You might nd the stu about series and parallel circuits helpful and practical, but Hewitt goes into more detail than I care about covering in this course.

2 Linear Motion
The main topics here are velocity and acceleration. If you compare with section 4.2 of Discover Physics, youll see its related. Specically, look at the discussion of inertia on p. 22 of Hewitt, and Figure 2.3 showing a rolling ball. Hewitt says it like this. When the ball is on the at part of the ramp, it cruises at a constant velocity. Its acceleration is zero, because acceleration is a change in velocity, and the balls velocity isnt changing. I say it a dierent way. When the ball is on the at part of the ramp, theres no way for it to gain or lose gravitational energy, so its kinetic energy has to stay the same. Therefore it keeps moving at the same speed. Notice how even though were using dierent language, were making the same predictions?

23 Magnetism
In my opinion, the parts of this chapter about magnetic forces are a little clumsy; in the past, my students have complained that they couldnt understand what Hewitt was getting at. I suggest you just read this chapter for culture and to learn about a few fun applications.

24 Electromagnetic Induction
I suggest you skip the section on power production. The section on self-induction is dealing with the same kind of eect Im talking about in example 9 in section 7.4, about unplugging a lamp and seeing a spark.

3 Nonlinear Motion
Hewitts discussion of vectors is a dierent way of looking at the same ideas I discuss in section 5.3 of Discover Physics.

4 Newtons Laws of Motion


I say conservation laws are the most fundamental laws of physics, and I say Newtons laws come logically from conservation of momentum. Hewitt treats Newtons laws as fundamental laws of nature, and covers them before he covers momentum. Again, these are just two dierent ways of telling the same story.

5 Momentum
I dislike the term impulse, which to me is just another piece of technical terminology to memorize. All it means is the amount of momentum transferred. If you make that translation, youll see that Hewitts denition momentum transfer = force time interval is simply a rearrangement of my denition of force, force = momentum transfer time .

6 Energy
Again, Hewitt introduces a new piece of technical terminology that I think is unnecessary. The term work simply means the amount of energy transferred. Whereas I base the system of energy measurement on the amount of heat needed to raise the

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