University of Illinois: Intermediate Mechanics II       

I am pleased to announce that pineapples are no longer banned from Intermediate Mechanics.

The diagram to the left is a Poincaré Section of the phase space trajectory of a nonlinear oscillator. We'll do some of that after spring break. It's cool stuff.

Before the inclusion of Physics 225 in the undergraduate curriculum, students first learned special realtivity in Physics 325 and 326. Lagrangians were covered in Physics 326; most versions of Intermediate Mechanics never quite managed to do much of anything with Fluid Dynamics. But that has changed! The restructured Physics 325/326 courses will vary from professor to professor, but mine covers Lagrangians, Hamiltonians, and Fluid Dynamics (through the Navier-Stokes equation) in 325. I use the now-available time in 326 for something new: a serious introduction to general relativity.

We'll also work up descriptions of scattering, orbital motion, and other fancy stuff.

I expect you to be familiar with Lagrangians, special relativity (as taught in Physiocs 225), and a little bit of fluid dynamics. If you took Physics 325 before it covered Lagrangians, you'll want to digest the material in my version of last semester's lecture notes.

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Click here for exam 2 solutions

Class mean and rms: 82.3 and 13.2

Click here for exam 1 solutions

Class mean and rms: 87.2 and 11.0

Matlab

Here's a primer.

Here are three script files: right-click and then save them to your computer.

     basics.m
     DebuggingCode.m
     MakingAScriptFile.m

Gnus

The course meets on Monday and Wednesdays in 144 Loomis, 12:30 pm to 1:50 pm. As was the case in Physics 325, attendance is mandatory. I will dock your course grade if you miss more than a very small number of classes, or more than a small number of problem sets.

Discussion sections meet Wednesdays, from 5 pm to 9 pm. Note the room change for the 5 pm section, which now meets in 236 Loomis. All other sections will meet in 35 Loomis. (That's in the Loomis basement. Sometimes the room is chilly, so dress appropriately.)

Office hours begin Thursday, January 24. Kevin will staff them from 2 pm to 4 pm, while Po-Yao will cover the Thursday, 4 pm - 5 pm slot. We will also hold office hours on Monday afternoons, from 2 pm to 5 pm. Kevin will cover the 2 pm - 4 pm interval, and JJ the 4 pm - 5 pm slot.

The room for office hours moves around quite a bit. Here's where we'll be:

Day/time	Room
Thursday, 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm	322 Loomis
Thursday, 3:30 pm - 5 pm	158 Loomis
Monday, 2 pm - 5 pm	35 Loomis

The rhythm of things

I'll introduce new material in the Monday and Wednesday lectures and distribute a problem set covering the week's material in lecture on Wednesday. You'll put your completed problem sets in the yellow homework box on the second floor of Loomis by noon on Friday of the following week. At the Wednesday evening problem session held two days before the problem set is due you'll have a chance to work a few simple problems on the material of the problem set. I will return graded problem sets in class on Wednesday, the week after you turn them in.

Lecture notes

Copies of my lecture notes will be available from Notes-n-Quotes on John St. in Campustown. You should buy a set and bring them to class. These really are the notes that I will use when lecturing: they are typed (and even include a table of contents), but I will use the blackboard rather than a laptop and projector. You can also view (but not print them) online.

Textbooks

The required text for the course is Classical Dynamics of Particles and Systems, 5th edition, by Stephen T. Thornton and Jerry B. Marion, same as for Physics 325. It costs a bundle, so you might consider buying the fourth edition instead, or even the third. Any of these would be fine, although there is a small amount of material on chaos that is absent before the fourth edition so you might want to borrow a more recent version to read that chapter at some point. You can even get away with buying the second edition, if you can find one. (Marion, who was the sole author of the first and second editions, died in 1981, so he won't care what we do. Thornton's wife is a shuttle astronaut: he's got other things to worry about.)

Course staff

I'll give the lectures and write most of the homework, problem session, and exam problems. As you know, I do research in experimental elementary particle physics. I concentrate primarily on the Mu2e experiment at Fermilab. I also put a little time into matters relating to the nasty side of higher education accreditation. (You heard something about this last semester; that's what generated all those Rumpdock word problems.)

Kevin Roberts, a physics graduate student, will run the Wednesday evening problem sessions, which will be in Loomis 236.

Po-Yao Chang and Jia Jun Wong will grade the problem sets in 326.

Office hours

When my car needs an oil change I just show up at the local Oil-I-Versity. Sometimes I'll call to see if they're open, but I never make an appointment.

Let's do office hours the same way. Since I'm usually in my office when I'm not out of town, call (or email) to check that I'll be around, and just stop by. It's also OK to show up unannounced, but you run the risk of catching me when I am in the middle of a phone meeting, or on my way to a seminar.

Kevin, Po-Yao, and Jia Jun will also be available for consultation and advice. We'll schedule officer hours once the course is up and running; you can also contect them for appointments outside of their regularly scheduled office hours.

Grading

Your course grade will be based on your homework (~20%), exams (~75%), and participation in weekly problem sessions (~5%). There will be two midterm exams and a final. I do not plan to curve the grades so it is to your advantage to work with other students to master the material.

I do not object to students working together to complete problem sets, but remember: the best way to prepare for exams is to learn to work problems. You should try working all the problems in a homework assignment before collaborating with your fellow students.

Homework that is late by up to one week will be penalized 50%. Homework that is more than one week late will not be graded.

Attendance at the Wednesday evening problem session is obligatory–show up on time to receive full credit. If you're late by more than 15 minutes we'll dock you 50%. If you're late by more than 30 minutes you will not receive credit.

If you miss class because you're ill, please contact me. If something else comes up that interferes with your ability to complete an assignment on time, try to let me know in advance.

 No calculators, no computers 

Same deal as last semester: unless a problem explicitly states otherwise, you are not to use any calculating devices or symbolic manipulation tools in any of your work. No calculators, no computers, no slide rules. And no use of electronic search tools to find material relating to solutions to problems you are working. I will only permit paper and pencil, and information you can find in (paper) textbooks and (paper) reference works such as calculus texts or tables of integrals and special functions. No fooling–you are on your honor to hold to this.

There is something new, though: this semester you're going to (learn to) write code in order to perform numerical integrations of differential equations. So there will be one machine problem per problem set for which you will (of course) do something on a personal computer. I suggest that you install Matlab (free throught the university) by the end of the first week of the semester.

On being clueless

Same as it ever was.

Stuff worth checking out

• Special Relativity in 14 Easy (Hyper)lessons

• Australian National University Relativistic Optics: very cool graphics and animations.