Welcome:

 

An important part of how the discipline of physics is practiced is the idea of multiple representations. As we seek to describe different features of the world in each case we develop, over time, particular tools in each context. In each section the tools for a particular context will be introduced and and simple exercises to check your understanding will be suggested.

Part of the longer term challenge of becoming a scientist is the need to choose which tools may be useful based on the context of the situation you are considering. In some cases there are clear clues and in others we need to try different tools out and evaluate whether they are being helpful along the way.

The general plan is that you will take your own time outside of class to work your way through the preparation materials. No worries about mastering them but come ready to start trying to use whatever tools in the context of various kinds of physics problems. Think of this as part of the time that you would have been reading a text or catching up on homework.

As I'm building these physics documents I'm being reminded of a potential challenge you will face as students. The tools and concepts that I am building into this website are used by physics teachers pretty universally but the language that each teacher uses is somewhat personal and unique. This can lead to some confusions but resolving those question marks in your mind is a very useful strategy in developing your personal understanding of the idea. I bring this up because I want you to be aware that I may use a slightly different language when I talk about whatever concept we are exploring without any specific intent to confuse you.

It doesn't help in trying to generate effective communication in science when the following is essentially a meme for both scientists and engineers. The text on which this version of the discussion was created (by GE in 1962 though there are much earlier versions) is available here as a pdf.

 

Tools:

This feels like a good place to discuss the tools that you will need for this course.

A dedicated laptop or desktop computer:

Especially during this time, when most teachers are rebuilding and changing their coursework to adapt to the needs of remote learning, having access to a computer that is reasonably well connected to the interwebs seems critical. WIndows , OSX, and LINUX operating systems will be generally supported. Students with Chromebooks have had difficulties in the past which appears to be related to the browser based focus of Chromebooks. I send reminders and updates to course materials several times a week. Be sure that when you visit the course website (NOT Bb!) you refresh the page to be sure you have the most current version.

Firefox Browser:

While I am generally agnostic about particular software tools you use in class I have to note that our LMS (Blackboard) shows a high preference for Firefox as a browser. While you may use Safari or Google Chrome in your daily life I encourage you to be sure you have Firefox installed on your computer and that you use it whenever you are interacting with the LMS.

Calculator:

The vast majority of your calculational needs in this class can be met with a very basic calculator. Even the one on your phone will do just fine. Any graphing or plotting for this class will be done using a different tool and not your graphing calculator. We will also be developing explicit estimation skills in this class which will ask you to do rough math in your head.

Word Processor:

As with web browsers there are a whole range of possible tools you might use for generating word processed documents. The reality is that the .doc or .docx format has become embedded in our world so a tool that produces a document in this format is essential. The native document tool in OSX which is Pages produces documents that CAN NOT be read by the LMS. I work primarily in OSX and I don't have Pages on my machine so I will have to reject any documents in .pages format. Many of you may keep your documents in Google docs or in Dropbox which is fine. When you turn in a document please submit an actual document so I don't have to download your document from any other location to read it. Thanks for helping out in this way.

Anaconda/Jupyterlab:

A primary tool that you will need that is not part of the normal spectrum of software tools is JupyterLab. You will need this for the first lab this week so I encourage you to do your best to get the software installed ASAP. Directions for installation are given on Anaconda Install page. This software works across all platforms with reasonably current operating systems. The software is installed on the lab laptops which you can access outside of class if they are not in use (checkout process). Sorry -- the software is NOT installed on computers anywhere else on campus.

This software gives us access to python as a coding and plotting language. We are building python into this class because coding is now considered a basic skill by many engineering employers. There are also tools in python that emulate MATLAB which is a calculational tool used by many engineering programs including OSU. Along with python Jupyterlab also embeds LaTeX which is a tool for producing well rendered math rich science and engineering documents. Jupyterlab also supports python notebooks which allow us to create interactive documents that include well rendered text and math along with computational tools and plotting tools. You will be writing your lab reports in python notebooks and exporting them to pdf documents to turn in. These are typical of engineering documents that many of you will be expected to produce as part of your future employment.

Scientific Prefixes

NIST is our national department of standards and measurements who maintains a list of scientific prefixes. We are only interested in those from 10^-15 to 10⁺¹⁵ for the purposes of this class. It is interesting to note that this web resource indicates that giga should be pronounced "jig-a". On the other hand that conflicts with the Cambridge Dictionary pronunciation. My personal experience is completely consistent with the Cambridge Dictionary version and I have never heard any other except for Doc Brown in 'Back to the Future'. There is a prefixes test in Week 1 on the LMS to test your knowledge.

Scientific Notation

Why? It's about making numbers accessible by expressing them as a comprehensible (1 to 10 or maybe 100) number of 'chunks' and then trying to get a grip on what the 'chunk' represents. Here's a Gizmodo article about trying to understand really big numbers (that also applies to really small numbers). I will generally accept answers up to 1000 without scientific notation or prefixes. For numbers smaller than 1. I will expect scientific notation for anything under 0.1 for clarity.