Readings
and Links
Physics 121, Fall 2010
Prof. E. F. Redish
Readings
The following text materials are available on our (password protected) Blackboard
website.
- Chapters from Understanding Physics, by
Cummings, Laws, Redish, and Cooney (John Wiley & Sons, 2004). Although
this text does include some calculus, it also contains motivation and conceptual
discussions that better match my approch in this class than other texts.
- For those of you who are
pre-med or pre-health care, the introductory chapter of Dr. Jerome Groopman's
book, How
Doctors Think, makes clear the value of some of
the methods of thinking we are trying to encourage in this class in the context
of health care.
Links
Here are some websites that might help make sense of some of the issues raised
in class. If you discover others that you find useful, let me know and I will
add them to the list.
- Scales
- Powers
of Ten (the 1977 version - slightly outdated in our scientific knowledge
at the upper and lower limits)
Powers
of Ten (the Simpsons version -- take it cum grano salis )
- There is a more modern IMAX version (narrated by Morgan Freeman), but the
version downloaded to youtube doesn't include the small, only the large.
If anyone finds a version of this on the web, let me know so I can add a link
to it.
- Basic Math
- Algebra
Referesher (West Texas A&M review of algebra)
- Scientific
Notation
For practice, try the Scientific
Notation quiz from our Astronomy Department!
- Trig Refresher (I haven't
found one I like. Let me know about what you have found.)
- Algebra
Practice quiz (by Adam Berman)
- Vectors
- Raffles
Junior College Adding and subtracting vectors with applets (mostly
head-to-tail rule)
- Cal
Poly Adding and subtracting vectors with applets (lots of rules)
RETURNS
University of Maryland |
Physics Department |
Physics 121 Home |
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This page prepared by
Edward F. Redish
Department of Physics
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742
Phone: (301) 405-6120
Email: redish@physics.umd.edu
Last revision 22. August,
2010.