Practice Problems

These are NOT your homework problems due for class! Enough students from previous semesters complained about not having some simple problems to practice on that we decided to offer a few from now on. However, we will not grade these or spend any time on them inside lecture. You are welcome to bring them up in the Course Center hours and on the ELMS Discussions.

Similarly, students have complained about not having a physical textbook to read (though the wiki readings effecively form exactly that). The wiki readings are undergoing a slight conversion to point out exactly where examples are written for you to see the mathematics in action. In addition, we currently are suggesting that if students cannot survive without a book, you can buy or rent (new or used):

  • Understanding Physics Part 1 by Cummings, Laws, Redish & Coon (Wiley, 2003)

    • and refer to that with people in the Course Center for clarification. Barring that, any old physics textbook is useful for this sort of thing if you prefer, though we argue based on decades of evidence that older pedagogies misunderstand the real issues that students who are new to physics have with learning it!

    Week Rationale Problems (file to download) which may include "answers" complete or not
    Week 2 (HW1 related) (2/6)
    1. Playing with estimation; learning how to justify assumptions (or look up reasonable numbers).
    2. More fun with estimations;exponential growth is impressive!
    3. Conversion factors - be comfortable with them! Justify your conversions and make sure you don't screw up dimensionality in the process.
    4. The arbitrariness of origins and scales...but also developing the intuitive connection between formulae and physical measurement.

    Download this file for extra problems to practice estimation, unit conversion.

    Week 3 (HW2 related) (2/13)
    1. Position, velocity, acceleration
    2. graphing them
    3. seeing the calculus involved

    Download this file for extra problems on making sense of position, velocity and acceleration.

    Week 4 (HW3 related) (2/20)

    Some of the forces mentioned in here are specific kinds: gravity, friction and air resistance. Don't panic! We'll be classifying types of forces this week. Please do NOT confuse an individual force on an object with the net force. In these oversimplified problems, sometimes there happens to be only force (and therefore mathematically equivalent to the net force by default).

    Download this file for extra problems on making sense of position, velocity and acceleration and now, forces!

    Week 5 (HW4 related) (2/27)

    Fun with angles! And friction! And DON'T CONFUSE VELOCITY AND ACCELERATION!!!

    Download this file for extra problems on making sense of friction and angles.

    Week 6: Midterm Exam 1

    Weeks 7 & 8 (HW5 & 6 related) (3/13 & 3/27)

    What a drag! More fun with angles! And Coulomb's Law (electrostatics)! Adding vectors!

    Download this file for extra problems on making sense of drag and electrostatics.

    Weeks 9 & 10 (HW7 & 8 related) (4/3 & 4/10)

    Diffusion! Pressure! Linear momentum!

    Download this file for extra problems on making sense of diffusion, linear momentum, pressure & temperature, etc.

    Week 11: Midterm Exam 2