Highlights of midterm survey & responses

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Jeffrey O’Connor’
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1 Announcements Reading this week: Gregory, Chapter 6 Observations of the moon, The satellites of Jupiter, Galileo's Theory of the Tides, Excerpts from The Dialogues HW 4 due today, HW3 solutions and HW5 posted Results of midterm survey.

2 Highlights of midterm survey & responses (more complete summary posted on web page) 1. Overall pace, organization, lectures (+ office hours) Pace/level: too fast: 4 just right: 12 too slow: 0 Organization: good, with suggestions Lectures: generally good, like tag team Content: many said good, some said too much math/physics Office hours: 4 people said Monday ofc. hr. would be nice Responses: 1) PH will hold new Monday 7 th ofc. hr. 2) PH will hold review sessions: Math review: Mon. Feb. 23 Exam review Wed. Feb 25 6:30pm NPB pm NPB 2205

3 2. Homework Overall: fair: 5 confusing: 6 too hard: 2 graded too harshly: 2 stimulating 3 unrelated to lecture 3 Unprepared for math/physics questions Can t find the answers Can we go over them in class? Too much assumed as common knowledge Responses: 1) Trying to work on right mix of physics/history, making questions clearer. 2) If you re confused, please attend ofc. hrs. OR make an appt. OR send an 3) Math review notes online, review sessions

4 3. Lab Overall: fair, interesting, but too long, take lab books home: 14 length ok, maybe streamline a bit: 2 grading too harsh: 6 too hard: 2 TA should give more intro at beginning Stimulating, relates to lecture topics Write-ups too wordy, confusing: write in clear steps Responses: 1) You can take lab books home until Thurs. 2) We ll try to curtail labs a bit, start early 3) Write-ups with discrete steps identified 4) Tim will give more extensive intro

5 4. General comments Tag-team keeps things fresh Timeline is confusing! Pre-lecture recap helpful! Website, lecture log helpful! Can we please access our grades? Half the class finds the work easy science majors Responses: 1) Grades will be posted later this week on canvas 2) Very few actual science majors in class history of science, must discuss science a bit

Johannes Kepler 1571-1630 Last time Kepler: looked for mathematical beauty in the universe as way of knowing God Early work: orbits of planets correspond to nested regular ( platonic ) solids

6 Johannes Kepler Last time Kepler: looked for mathematical beauty in the universe as way of knowing God Early work: orbits of planets correspond to nested regular ( platonic ) solids explains # planets, orbit spacing sort of. Later: he works with Tycho s data, develops 3 laws: 1) Planets move in ellipses with sun at 1 focus 2) planets sweep out equal areas in equal times* 3) relationship of orbital period to radius: T 2 R 3 1 st to pose question of what causes planetary motions * 2 nd law related to conservation of angular momentum similar to figure skater

7 How does Kepler explain naturally the fact that a planet can move at different speeds at different times along its orbit? 1. By means of an equant 2. Using epicycles and deferents 3. Planets don t have different speeds; it just looks that way 4. Planets approach Earth more closely at some times than others on their elliptical orbits 5. Planets approach the Sun more closely at some times than others on their elliptical orbits

8 Comments on HW3 result too big! similar triangles: d = L D r Many people covered the moon a bit too much!

9 Timeline

Galileo Galilei 1564-1642 Studied medicine at university in Pisa, but real interest was math Impressed Jesuit mathematician, was able to obtain teaching position at Pisa Early

10 Galileo Galilei Studied medicine at university in Pisa, but real interest was math Impressed Jesuit mathematician, was able to obtain teaching position at Pisa Early indications of Copernicanism, e.g. letter to Kepler; however did not avow publicly Unlike many other philosophers, liked to write in vernacular rather than latin astute political sense

11 Quote from papa (Vincenzo Galilei, musician) It appears to me that those who rely simply on the weight of authority to prove any assertion, without searching out the arguments to support it, act absurdly. I wish to question freely and to answer freely without any sort of adulation. That well becomes any who are sincere in the search for truth.

12 Galileo and falling bodies: Aristotle must be wrong--a thought experiment Consider two bodies, one weighing twice as much as the other. Aristotle would say 1 would fall twice as fast as 2, v 1 =2v 2 Galileo: tie the two together. Light one should retard heavy one, since it wants to fall more slowly. So speed of total is v tot <v 1 =2v 2 But one can equally well regard the two as a composite object weight which should fall with three times the speed of the light body, so v tot =3v 2 Internal contradiction

13 Galileo and falling bodies Story from biographer: G dropped balls of different weight from tower, found they hit bottom at same time Galileo rejected Aristotle, but believed (early years) that all objects would accelerate until they reached terminal velocity characteristic of specific material

14 Flash forward reminder: terminal velocity v 120mph a=9.8 m/s 2 Right after jumping: v increases 9.8 m/s per sec. Accelerated motion! After a few seconds of free fall, air resistance increases with speed to the point where it cancels gravity: uniform motion at v terminal

15 Brian Cox demonstrates that bowling ball & feather fall at same rate in a (near) vacuum Although Galileo probably didn t do the leaning tower expt. as legend would have it, he would have loved to do the expt. with the vacuum pump, since he developed the technique of idealization in physics What would happen if I removed the air? What would happen if I removed friction?

Physicists metaphor: spherical cow The farmer s cow wasn t giving milk; he had tried everything, & nothing worked. So he called a Yes, theoretical that was the physicist, punch line!

16 Physicists metaphor: spherical cow The farmer s cow wasn t giving milk; he had tried everything, & nothing worked. So he called a Yes, theoretical that was the physicist, punch line! who said she would think about it. The next day she visited the farmer, who was eager to hear the solution. The physicist went to the blackboard, and began, Consider a spherical cow

Galileo s Pendulum θ max = amplitude ( how far back you pull the weight initially) Galileo noticed that the time for one oscillation, the period T, does not depend on the

17 Galileo s Pendulum θ max = amplitude ( how far back you pull the weight initially) Galileo noticed that the time for one oscillation, the period T, does not depend on the amplitude, for small amplitude oscillations. He measured T with his pulse, and in fact proposed a pendulum as a way to measure pulses in hospitals! You ll verify this in the lab today!

with inclined planes enabled him to slow down motion to observe

18 Galileo demonstrates inclined plane to Giovanni de Medici Giuseppe Bezuoli, 1841 Galileo s expts. with inclined planes enabled him to slow down motion to observe it better convinced him that mathematics could be applied to earthly as well as celestial realm

19 Galileo showed that height of falling body varied as (time to ground) 2, or y t 2 Galileo: vertical distance traversed in equal times increased in accordance with sequence of odd numbers: e.g 1 foot, 3 feet, 5 feet, 7 feet in 1 st 4 sec Total distance fallen: 1,1+3,1+3+5, = 1,4,9,16 in 1 st 4 sec He deduced y=t 2 (const. acceleration).

20 Galileo showed that projectiles have parabolic motion G s measurements showed that heights y x 2 ranges x t (time in air) G analyzed motion in terms of composite ( double ) motion in both x and y simultaneously. Taken together, two observations imply y t 2 as before

21 The actual logbook! Importance of Galileo s approach to understanding motion: 1 st combined use of empirical measurements and mathematical analysis!

Kepler Galileo and Newton

Kepler Galileo and Newton Kepler: determined the motion of the planets. Understanding this motion was determined by physicists like Galileo and Newton and many others. Needed to develop Physics as a science: