College Freshman Physics

Did a quick google for a reminder of which concepts were included in the first semester, and got this: https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Physics_equations/Sheet/First_semester

It's a standard equation sheet for the first semester. Maybe it'll help.

For me, in engineering, first term physics of first year was kinematics + dynamics. (Second term was electricity + magnetism.) However, none of the equations that come to mind have an exponent higher than 2... So if he were to screw up one of those, he'd put no exponent where there should be a 2, for example. Though you could also have him screw up an exponent in a constant, such as the universal gravitation constant...

Maryn,

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're after, but I agree with critter LJD on the subject matter. For the two week gap, I was thinking that the MC would miss the concept of a 'dimensionality check' (my terminology might be out of date). This would allow the other character (but not the MC) to quickly spot that there was an error in an exponent in the MC's equations.

For a ten step analysis, another kinematic problem could bring in viscosity.

If this sounds even remotely like what you're after, I could pry something out of my bookshelves (physics and engineering background). But I'd need more details about your requirements.

Regards,

Techs

Maryn said:

I'm turning a short story I wrote into a play. Because it's a visual medium, all of a sudden I need far more knowledge about Physics than I have. Yikes, I never even took Physics!

My character is midway through the first semester of a college Physics course. He's been sick, missed two weeks of classes, and is now lost. He is going to attempt to solve a problem on the blackboard, and another character will correct an exponent. I do not need the complete problem, only the beginning of it, setting up the basic algorithm (if that's even the right word) and just starting to work it through. It needs to have an exponent.

Later on, I need a more complex problem which he will solve completely. It needs to be of the appropriate level for near the end of the first semester course. It should be relatively big in terms of the number of steps to solve it (maybe ten steps?), showing all the work.

I do not need to understand either problem--thank goodness--but I do need to be able to write them using only the characters and symbols available in ordinary word processing.

Help!

Maryn, who can diagram a sentence but not do this

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Techs Walker said:

For the two week gap, I was thinking that the MC would miss the concept of a 'dimensionality check' (my terminology might be out of date).

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That sounds perfectly plausible to me.

Maryn said:

I do not need to understand either problem--thank goodness--but I do need to be able to write them using only the characters and symbols available in ordinary word processing..

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My first thought was something like a simple harmonic motion problem, but does your word-processor support Greek characters? They pop up a lot in physics.

Hey Maryn,

For your worked problems, I had two possibilities in mind. One was the same as critter Mark HJ has mentioned: a simple harmonic oscillator, for the problem where the exponent error is discovered by somebody looking at the dimensionality. One good example of this is a swinging pendulum. Then for the more complex aspect of the problem, the viscosity drag of the air would gradually reduce the amplitude of the swing (ie a 'damped' simple harmonic oscillator).

In your open-sourced textbook, the simple harmonic oscillator doesn't come up until chapter 28, and inferring from the chapter titles, I don't think damping is considered at all. That textbook might be at too low a level for what I had in mind. On the other hand, the Feynman lectures might be at too high a level for the relatively short problems that I think you're after. I looked at the exercises in the Feynman link, and none seemed to touch on what I was after.

Maryn, a suggestion: Rather than flipping through textbooks looking for suitable problems (and facing possible copyright concerns with the problem statements and/or solutions), would it work for you if I (or Mark HJ or LJD or any other appropriate critter) supplied both the appropriate problem and the solution? Honestly, it might be less work that way. Let me know what you think.

I have a question related to the setting of the play. You have your MC (up at a blackboard?) attempting to solve a problem, but having trouble due to missed classes. Were you picturing this happening in a lecture session? Must it? Recalling my early university physics classes, they were huge: 100 to 200 students. And the lecturer was always in a rush to get through all the material. There was never a student 'up at the blackboard', as there might have been in a high school class. However, that experience was a long time ago, at a large Canadian university with a strong technical reputation. It might be different elsewhere. Mark HJ?
OTOH, the blackboard session is very plausible for a supplementary Q&A session guided by a Teaching Assistant--would that work for you, Maryn?

Techs

Maryn said:

Okay, I have two sources for Physics people to look at. One is a free PDF open-sourced textbook. This link is to the chapter titles. The textbook is intended to be for a full academic year, so I'd be safe with one chapter per week. For the first problem, he'd be on chapter 8, One-Dimensional Motion: Collision Type II--but he will have missed chapters 6 One-Dimensional Motion (Motion Along a Line): Definitions and Mathematics and chapter 7 One-Dimensional Motion: The Constant Acceleration Equations.

I've also got some exercises I can nearly understand--in principle, not how to solve them--from the Feynman lectures. But I don't know which ones my character should be able to do based on where he is in the class. Most have solutions posted, some more than one, but like I said, it's not clear whether I could just copy part of such a solution.

The idea here is that if this play is produced, the actor will need to write the beginning of a problem he can't solve, and someone will need to write a much bigger equation through to its end. I presume it would be helpful to the theatre company if the Physics part were provided.

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Sorry, I started responding here hours ago, and then I clicked on the link to Maryn's blog... It's kind of nice coming across a writer's blog that isn't about writing, so I got caught up... then my other half wanted to show me where she chased off the fox that's been killing our hens... Anyway:

Looking at that text book, I had the feeling that it was too basic and was wondering if it was a difference in the US and UK education systems. It was very much a collection of topics that I thought of as pre-college, but from age 16-18 I was studying both maths and physics (+chemistry) and I think there was a presumption that the math you needed for physics was covered elsewhere and all the physics teaching had to do was take the applied math and show how it was used in the physics.

At university the class sizes I saw were smaller than 100, but still relatively large and very much lecturer driven he/she spoke, we listened, and wrote very fast. There were then tutorial groups, probably no more than a dozen students, and that was more interactive, going over assignment work etc, which sounds like Techs's teaching assistant scenario.

Maryn,

Maryn said:

Oh, I would absolutely love that.[by 'that', would you confirm that you are referring to the idea of supplying both the problem/exercise and the solution.] And if the person who supplies me the physics problems has the necessary patience****, I will mail a batch of Hardcore Cornography (what my family calls our caramel corn)[Although caramel corn is tempting, I can commit to doing this for the sheer joy of WTF: how can you write a play involving an exponent? (If so, then my WIP has a chance)] to them if I win in the play contest.[what is the time scale for this contest?]

In the first scene, the guy starts out reading the problem I "borrowed" to an empty classroom, as a study technique. So it would be good if it begins as a word problem that can be understood in a sentence or two. That will make more sense to an audience than F - a/x. Simple stuff like the Feynman site showed would work great.

Maryn, wondering if she has brown sugar in the house

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**** Maryn, I'll PM you some clarifying questions, to make sure that I understand your needs.

I get the impression that the UK system has changed a bit since my experience - moving toward less specialisation at a young age.

In case it helps, first year university in USA is equivalent to 2nd year A-level in the UK (i.e. year 13, if you're doing A-levels*) Three A-levels is the standard requirement for getting into university. So a lot of USA first year university stuff would be covered in A-level over here. By contrast, USA uni courses are usually four years, but over here they're usually three years, which would be equivalent to 2nd 3rd and 4th year in USA uni. So it all evens out in the end.

*not everyone in year 13 would be doing A-levels as there are other kinds of qualifications they could do instead

I don't know enough about physics to answer the question though. I'm a biology nerd.

Mark HJ said:

I get the impression that the UK system has changed a bit since my experience - moving toward less specialisation at a young age.

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Overall it hasn't changed much since GCSE's replaced O-levels and CSE's. Mostly it's the government arsing around with names of qualifications and grading systems to make it look like they're doing something.

neandermagnon said:

Overall it hasn't changed much since GCSE's replaced O-levels and CSE's. Mostly it's the government arsing around with names of qualifications and grading systems to make it look like they're doing something.

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So that's how I got my (false) impression. The whole O/A-level thing was 35+ years ago for me. Post-uni, my partner and myself did career not kids, as did my sister, so I'm totally out of touch with the way the system changed.

When ansdwhere? Physics has changed over the years, but the basics are motion, waves and sounds, magnetism and electricity and the physics of light, which is kind of a summation of the rest. Google an equation in one of those categories or try some of the free online training for these topics.

FWIW, I kept getting scolded for the wrong equations in the electrical portion, even though they were right and I proved it. After a bit the professor just told everyone to ignore the way I did it. Same thing happened in advanced accounting. Seems nobody I went through these classes with had seen a slide rule or understood algorithms.

Jeff

In the U.S., most College Freshman Anything is little more than Remedial High School Anything.

caw