From the syllabus:
Exam 1 | Feb 10 (Thur) |
Exam 2 |
March 17 (Thur) |
Final Exam |
Tu May 3, 7:30 - 10 PM |
There are no makeups. You may not miss any exam except for reasons beyond your control, approved by Prof. Pollock or Rey (usually a confirmed medical problem with written documentation.) In the unusual case of an (at most, single) excused absence from midterms, I'll use an average of your other exams. You may bring one side of a single sheet of 8.5 in. x 11 in. paper for each exam, with your own handwritten notes. (If needed, calculators with scientific notation will be allowed, but probably they won't be useful)Grade information will be posted on CULearn, as well as solutions, after the exams .
Note that "one side for each exam" is cumulative - so for the final, you are allowed THREE sides total!
Final exam info:
The final exam will be cumulative. Since the final is twice as long as a midterm, roughly half the material on the final will be basically new stuff (consider this as "Midterm Exam #3") and the other half will be going back to review the whole term. New material since the 2nd midterm (which was outlined further down in this file) would include Taylor Chapter 5 (simple harmonic motion, damped SHM, damped SHM with sinusoidal or other periodic drivers) plus anything we have done in Boas, lecture notes, and homeworks all term. We have started to cover a number of topics that aren't in Taylor, including phase diagrams, Delta functions, Partial Differential Equations (and the method of separation of variables), Fourier series (which is in Taylor Ch 5), Fourier transforms, and whatever we wrap up the term with.
I am considering putting a very simple Mathematica question in the "quicky" portion of the exam, since we've done so many homework problems with MMA. It won't be anything fancy (and won't require a computer), basically I just want to make sure you know the most very basic ideas. (If you've been doing the MMA homework problems, there won't be anything to "study" for this. )
Looking for some practice problems?
For still more practice -
Harmonic Oscillators? How about a problem in 2D with nonzero phase, like Taylor 5.16?
Damped Harmonic motion? Maybe Taylor 5.22?
Driven oscillations and resonance - perhaps Taylor 5.43. Or, 5.37 (practice your Mathematica skills!) Boas 8.6.has many (7, 11 are pretty apt)
Fourier series: Boas Ch 7.5, 7.7,7.8, and 7.9 has a big pile (with solutions to many!) any one of which is useful. You know my exam style, you might have to do integrals but it likely will be fairly straightforward (but might include a u-substitution, or a single integration by parts, that sort of thing)
PDE's: Any of Boas' question in 13.2 might be helpful review, how about 13.2.1?
Dirac delta function: Boas 8.11.15 or 21?
Fourier transforms: Perhaps Boas Ch 7.12, (any of those...)
(Suggestions from earlier material are in the sections below)
Exam 2 info:
Here is a histogram of exam 2 scores. Max possible is 43 points
And, below is an "estimated course grade" (computed using the first 2 exams, weighted as shown in the syllabus, as 64% of your grade, homeworks (after dropping one) as 30%, and preflights as 6%. I have not yet included extra credit besides clickers)
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Exam 2 is cumulative (stuff from Exam 1 can certainly appear again, see below!) But we tend to focus on newer material since the first midterm, which would be Taylor Chapter 3 (though, we did not cover much of 3.4 or any of 3.5) and 4 (though, we did not cover all of 4.8 or any of 4.9-10) and 5.1-2. Plus anything we have done in Boas, lecture notes, and homeworks up to exam day. Don't forget our extensive coverage of gravity which is in my lecture notes, but not in Taylor! (Gauss' law, direct integration of Newton's law of gravity, direct integration of the gravitational potential energy, followed perhaps by F=-grad U)
In terms of topics, this includes:
Conservation of momentum, and rockets.
Kinetic energy and work/energy theorem (including line integrals).
Potential energy and conservative forces (inluding the ide of curl, and use of line integrals here too)
Force as the gradient of potential energy (and basic idea and math of gradient)
Energy and stability in 1-D systems
Gravity, including computing gravity with direct integration, but also with Gauss' law, and also by finding the potential and then using that (F=-grad U) This was the one part NOT in Taylor!
Oscillations and Simple Harmonic Motion - including the various forms of the solution to the 2nd order ODE that describes SHM.
Complex numbers.
(Damped, and driven oscillators won't be on this midterm - we'll save that for the final)
Looking for some practice problems?
Remember rockets? How about reviewing Taylor 3.8 (which was pretty much one of our homework problems)
Line integrals, gradient, curl? How about looking back at old preflights? (Note that I have solutions to all the preflights on our "virtual office hours page", you'll have to scroll through many responses to your questions, but my solutions are pretty easy to spot, the formatting is consistent)
Potential energy - how about Taylor 4.7? 4.16?
Stability and use of energy in 1-D systems- how about Taylor 4.31?
Gravity by direction integration? How about Boas 5.6.21? (Hint: use cylindrical coordinates!)
Gravity by Gauss' law? (Boas 6.10.12 for an electrical analogue?)
Complex numbers? (How about Boas 2.4.3, or 2.9.7?)
Simple Harmonic motion: How about Taylor 5.2 or 3? 5.9?
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(Older stuff below:)
Exam 1 info:
Here is a histogram of exam 1 scores. Max possible is 59 points
And, below is an "estimated course grade" (computed using this first exam as 64% of your grade, homeworks (after dropping one) as 30%, and preflights as 6%. I have not yet included clicker extra credit.
Exam 1 will cover Taylor Chapters 1, 2, 3.1 and 3.3, plus anything we have done in Boas, lecture notes, and homeworks up to exam day.
Looking for some practice problems? For ODEs and separation of variables, how about Boas 8.1.4, or 8.2.1?
Can you Taylor expand a simple function around a point? How about, say, tan(x) for small x? Or, f(x)=(1-x)/(1+x)?
For Newton's laws, how about Taylor 1.35? If you add drag, maybe Taylor 2.11? (We pretty much did this one for HW, can you reproduce it without looking at your old work?)
Could you derive the terminal velocity, given some (arbitrary) drag force? (Taylor 2.1? What would be the terminal velocity in a case where fquad=flin?)
For momentum/Center of mass how about Taylor 3.3? 3.17?