General Physics II

Marlboro College, Spring 1996

General Info

This is the second term of an algebra-based, full-year introductory course in physics. The bulk of the first term was spent studying mechanics, with a bit of thermodynamics. This term is mostly electricity and magnetism, with a bit of quantum and/or relativity depending on how much time we have. There is also a lab offered with the course, in which you'll learn how to fry resistors and analyze the results statistically.

The text is Serway & Faughn's College Physics, fourth edition.

Assignments

week of Feb 1:
Problems:
- chap 17: # 39, 41, 49, 57, 59, 68
- chap 18: # 9, 11, 17, 21, 25
Lab:
1. Solder together a cube using 12 identical resistors. We'll calculate and measure its corner-to-corner resistance.
2. Measure the resistance of 2 different resistors using three different methods: (1) from the colors marked on it, (2) by direct measurement with the meter (ohm scale), and (3) by setting up a circuit with a 1.5 V and 3 V (two batteries in series) voltage source, measuring the voltage and current, and calculating R.
week of Feb 5:
Problems:
- chap 18: # 19, 20
- Explain in your own words why Kirchoff's Laws work.
- chap 15: 5, 7, 19, 22, 47, 55
- Use Gauss' Law to find the electric field around a long straight wire with a uniform charge density of 1 Coulomb/meter.
Lab:
1. First, measure the resistance of the cube you soldered last week. Report it's R_total / R_{one resistor}, with your uncertainty. Calculate the correct value and compare.
2. Second, practice calculating means, standard deviations, and a linear fit with the 10-sided dice. The question to answer (by direct measurement) is this:
  Is the average of the sum of N dice linearly correlated with the number of dice?
  Use any tools such as calculators, computer programs, or just pencil/paper/ruler that you wish.
  Here's my own dice analysis, done with NumberCrunchII.

by Jim Mahoney (mahoney@marlboro.edu).