Physics

Steve Carabello

Links for Physics 001

General Resources
Similar Courses
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3

Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8

Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 15

Note: All ratings are my initial personal opinions of the quality of the Web sites, nothing more.
Also: if I didn't think the sites were good, they wouldn't be here. So, one star isn't bad, it's just at the low end of "good enough to link."

General Resources	Rating	Description
Physics at Penn State Harrisburg	?	The Instructor's web pages.
The Learning Center	***	The Learning Center at PSH, located in Olmsted C-216. A peer physics tutor is available there.
Physics Evolution	****	An applet showing some of the historical evolution of physics, through key people and places.
Hyperphysics	****	A very well laid out Web site with descriptions of a wide variety of physics concepts. Very useful as review material.
Mechanics Animations	*****	Useful animations for the whole course. Some specific ones are also linked in the chapter-specific sections below.
The Scientific Revolution	**	Excerpts from Brooklyn College's course "The Shaping of the Modern World"
My Links page	?	Many links covering many general physics areas.

Similar Courses	Rating	Description
Physics at University Park	*****	Note: Click the link for Physics 001. Note that you can see sample exams, etc., though their course uses far more math than we will.
All Physics Undergraduate Courses	**	from Purdue University. Look at the course titles to find those similar to ours. Most include practice exams, lecture notes, useful links, applets, etc.
MIT OpenCourseWare	*****	Several of the courses include sample exams, and actual given exams, with solutions. Some also include video files of the lectures themselves. Scan through the course titles to find ones similar to this course.

Chapter 1: Physics, the Fundamental Science	Rating	Description
Powers of Ten	****	Applet: A visual representation of the scale of things.
Estimation	***	A shockwave game to get a feel for lengths, areas, volumes.
A Sense of Scale	**	A visual comparison of various distances
A Newer, "Playable" Nanoguitar	**	News Story: "Its strings are really silicon bars, 150 by 200 nanometers in cross-section and ranging from 6 to 12 micrometers in length (a micrometer is one-millionth of a meter; a nanometer is a billionth of a meter, the length of three silicon atoms in a row). The strings vibrate at frequencies 17 octaves higher than those of a real guitar, or about 130,000 times higher."
The Gimli Glider	****	Discussion: Due to confusion with units, mechanical problems, and other very unusual issues, a Boeing 767 airliner runs out of fuel, and makes an emergency landing on an abandoned Royal Canadian Air Force Base that had been converted into a drag strip.
Mars Climate Orbiter failure	****	News Story: "Lockheed Martin, which was performing the calculations, was sending thruster data in English units -- in this case, pounds -- while NASA's navigation team was expecting metric units, Newtons. One pound is equal to 4.48 Newtons.... Mission controllers say that the orbiter dipped 60 miles closer to the Martian surface than expected -- falling just 38 miles (60 kilometers) above ground. Friction from atmospheric entry probably tore the craft apart or deflected it into a useless trajectory in space."
Fat fingered typing costs a trader's bosses £128m	***	News Story: Units can be extremely important: "He wanted to sell one share in a new telecoms company called J Com, for 600,000 yen (about £3,000). Unfortunately, the order went through as a sale of 600,000 shares at 1 yen each.... Despite Mizuho's attempts to rectify the mistake, some estimates put the possible financial damage to the firm at about 60 billion yen -- a figure that may be big enough to destabilise the securities arm of what is one of the four largest financial groups in the world." Also listed: "November 2002: A market maker confused the price of Ryanair shares in euros and sterling, sending the London quote up more than 61 per cent, from 404.5p to 653.7p."

Chapter 2: Describing Motion	Rating	Description
The Moving Man	****	Java: click on the link for "The Moving Man," to see a good Java simulation of a person moving. Drag the man around and view his position, velocity, and acceleration graphs. Or, move the position, velocity, or acceleration arrows, to see how he moves as a result.
Kinematics in 1-D	***	Animation: showing position, velocity, and acceleration graphs.
Instantaneous Speed	***	Applet and Discussion: Finding instantaneous vs. average speed, looking at a distance vs. time graph. See also the Applet and discussion about instantaneous velocity vs. average velocity for an object moving around in a circular path.

Chapter 3: Falling Objects and Projectile Motion	Rating	Description
Galileo and Einstein	****	Lecture notes, quotes, and analysis, from a class at the University of Virginia. The lecture notes, plus the links to Galileo in his own words, are especially helpful for those curious to learn more.
Inclined Plane	***	Animation and Discussion: One of Galileo's experiments, for a ball rolling down an inclined plane. From The Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence, Italy.
Hammer and Feather	****	Video: from NASA, dropping a hammer and a feather on the moon during one of the Apollo missions.
Free fall in a vacuum: penny and feather	*	Video: 3.16 MB MPEG movie, from the University of Iowa
Earth's Gravity Field	**	Images and Animation: g varies from place to place on the earth's surface.
Bomb Drop Animation	*	Animation
Cannon/Monkey Drop Applet	****	Applet. Or see this page for a step-by-step challenge
Cannon and fixed target, with and without air resistance	**	Applet
Projectile: cannon firing your choice of: tankshell, golfball, baseball, bowlingball, football, pumpkin, adult human, piano, Buick.	****	Flash. Adjust angle, initial speed, height of cannon, with or without air resistance. Use a tape measure to find distances (at any angle).
More about projectile motion	***	Applet
Kinematics in 2-D	***	Animation

Chapter 4: Newton's Laws: Explaining Motion,	Rating	Description
Free Body Diagrams example	*	Animation
Applet: Inclined Plane	***	Applet: One mass starts at rest on an inclined plane (that is allowed to have friction!), and is connected by a string (that passes over a massless, frictionless pulley) to a hanging mass. Shows the free body diagrams for each mass, and the answer for the acceleration of the system.
Car Coasting Through a Vertical Loop	****	Animation
Car Failing to Coast Through a Loop	*****	Animation
Aerodynamic forces	***	Animation. The forces shown are: T=Thrust, D=Drag, W=Weight, L=Lift. The velocity is also shown, though it is not a force.

Chapter 5: Circular Motion, the Planets, and Gravity	Rating	Description
Projectile and Satellite Orbits	**	Applet
Satellites in Earth/moon orbit	**	Applet: Can you find a stable orbit?
Applet: Orbit	**	Applet: Click-drag to determine the initial velocity vector, and see the (possible) orbit that results.
Kepler Motion	****	Applet
Gravity Simulator	*	Applet
Orbit Simulator	***	Flash gizmo. See also: ExploreLearning.
Earth and Mars	*	Applet: Confirm Kepler's Third Law
Newtonian Mountain	*	Applet: Possible paths of a projectile fired horizontally from a cannon, using a figure from Newton's Principia
Newtonian Mountain II	***	Applet: Another applet showing possible paths of a projectile fired horizontally from a cannon, using the same figure from Newton's Principia
Gravity model	*	Video
NASA's Near-Earth Objects database	**	Information and Applets: Click on the links for each of the objects to find some rather nice, interactive applets showing their orbits, and those of all the planets.
Astronomy Animations	****	Animations: Especially useful for this chapter are: Ptolemy's Model for a Superior Planet, Ptolemy's Model and the Phases of Venus, Copernicus's Model for a Superior Planet, Copernicus's Model and the Phases of Venus, Tidal Effects on a Planet and Satellite, Spring and Neap Tides on the Earth.

Chapter 6: Energy and Oscillations	Rating	Description
Lecture: loop, wrecking ball	****	Video: Conversion of Gravitational Potential Energy to Kinetic Energy: Click on Lecture 11 video, and go forward to 28:30 for the loop, 45:45 for the wrecking ball
Converting Potential Energy to Kinetic Energy on a Frictionless Ramp	**	Animation
Racing Balls	***	Applet. Can you explain why this happens?
Converting Potential Energy to Kinetic Energy Rolling Down Various Ramps	*	Animation
Roller Coaster Physics	****	Flash Gizmo, including hill height and friction.
Simple Harmonic Motion and Uniform Circular Motion	**	Applet
Spring and Pendulum	****	Shockwave
Applet: Damped Oscillator	***	Applet: adjust the mass, spring constant, and damping force, and see the resulting motion.
The Tacoma Narrows Bridge Disaster	****	Information, useful in discussing resonance.

Chapter 15: Making Waves	Rating	Description
Acoustics and Vibration Animations - Dan Russell, Kettering University	*****	Animations and Descriptions: many types of waves
Wave Animations	****	Animations: From Mike Gallis, instrutor from Penn State Schuylkill.

Chapter 9: The Behavior of Fluids	Rating	Description
Physlets	***	Applet: a simplified view of atomic motion. Under "Version 3" click on "Molecular" then click on "Start" or "Mixture"
Using Pascal's Principle to break a bottle	**	Video and Discussion: WRONG! They say this: "One particularly useless but nonetheless interesting application of Pascal's principle is the dropping of the bottom out of a glass bottle. If the bottle is filled to the top with water, then any pressure exerted on the water is transmitted undiminished to the bottom of the bottle, which has a larger area. The multiplied force can pop the bottom out of the bottle."
Using Cavitation to break a bottle	****	Video and Discussion: RIGHT! It's the temporary vacuum, followed by the onrushing water, that causes the bottle to break. See also the Science Hobbyist's site.
Archimedes' Principle	***	Applet: View buoyant forces in liquids.
Buoyancy and Stability	***	Flashlet: Useful if you would like to apply the ideas of Archimedes' Principle, one step beyond what we cover in class.
Misinterpretations of Bernoulli's Law	*****	Course Content: A very good discussion of how Bernoulli's principle is often misinterpreted.
Archimedes	***	A very interesting site by Chris Rorres, especially notable for his translating Archimedes' arguments to modern mathematical terms, and extending his work using new mathematical tools, in Completing Book II Of Archimedes's On Floating Bodies
Ball in a water stream	****	Read up on Bernoulli's Equation.
Ball in an air stream	***	Even more on Bernoulli's Equation.
Floating Beach Ball	****	Another use of Bernoulli's Equation.
Vacuum Bazooka	***	Atmospheric pressure is strong enough to blast a ping-pong ball through a soda can.
Atmospheric pressure: crushing a steel drum with an aspirator on a faucet	****	The difference in pressure due to moderately-flowing water can have some surprisingly strong effects.
Ball in a water stream	****	Read up on Bernoulli's Equation.
Finger in Beaker	***	Buoyant forces.

Chapter 10: Temperature and Heat	Rating	Description
Physlets	***	Applet: a simplified view of atomic motion. Under "Version 3" click on "Molecular" then click on "Start" or "Mixture"
3D simulator	*	Applet: masses on springs, with quite a bit of damping. Somewhat useful for showing motions of solids.
Bimetallic strip	**	Video Clip: the changes in shape with temperature of a bimetallic strip.
Various animations etc. of molecular systems	*	A set of links to various animations etc. of molecular systems. I thought "JSpringies applet" was a rather good one.
Molecular Model of Ideal Gas	****	Applet
Molecular Model of Ideal Gas 2	***	Applet. Shows the particles rather well, along with a speed distribution.
The following aren't related to what we discussed in class, but may be of interest:
Crushing cans and steel drums	**	Video clips. Also see a video of a "Cartesian Diver"
An Extension of the Imploding Can Demonstration	****	Demonstration description: click on the link for "An Extension of the Imploding Can Demonstration" under May 2006.
Entropy	****	Video clips: "Smash a Bulb" -- the usual, obviously irreversible process; and "Time Reversal" -- a relatively unusual, nearly reversible process.
The Otto cycle in a Four Stroke Engine	***	Animation
The Carnot cycle	***	Applet
Combustion Engines	**	Applets
Diesel Engine	***	Animation and Description
Two Cylinder Stirling Engine	****	Animation and Descriptions. For some other useful animations and descriptions of heat engines, see the other Animated Engines at this site.

Chapter 16: Light Waves and Color	Rating	Description
Applet: Spectrum	*	Applet: A generic view of the full electromagnetic spectrum, showing wavelengths, frequencies, names, what makes them, and how you observe them.
Spectral Signiatures	*	Applet and discussion: Spectra of white light, and of various elements.
Additive Color Mixing	****	Applet and Discussion: Forming various colors, via additive color mixing. Follow the "Next" button, for showing how a tube TV or monitor works.
Color Mixing	***	Applets and Discussion: Additive color mixing, Subtractive color mixing, color strcuture. (We won't apply that last one in class, but it is highly useful for web design, and other computer work.)
Physics Misconceptions	***	Discussion: Why Figure 16.6 in the text is wrong. Some other very useful discussion as well.

[To be continued...]

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