| Physics 3356 |
| An Upper Level Undergraduate Classical Mechanics Course |
| Spring 2005 |
This course is a continuation of phys 3355. The topics, left over from phys 3355, to be covered in this course are: small vibrations, waves, Hamilton, nonlinear dynamics, and special relativity. In part this course will be a seminar course as in the past.1 So, additional topics will be generated by the students with the instructor's guidance.
Regularly scheduled class meeting times, the associated topics, and assignments will be listed in this course calendar.
(verbatim from Wikipedia) "A seminar is a form of academic teaching in small groups where students are requested to actively participate during meetings. This often has to be done by presenting a paper in class and also in written form. Normally, participants must not be beginners. The idea behind seminars is to confront students with the methodology of their chosen subject and also to familiarize them with practical problems that might crop up during their research work."
So in addition to developing theoretical mechanics skills, you, the student, will be developing oral presentation, writing, research, and computer programming skills. Since this is not an advanced course, the seminar topics are not required to be bleeding edge research; a thorough presentation of an application of classical mechanics will do. More information about student projects can be found in the student projects requirements page.
The following text books are carried over from the fall 2004 prerequisite phys 3355 course:
This course requires that you have Mathematica. You can get it for $20 at Virginia Tech's Student Software Distribution, but the license expires September 30, 2005. Student Software Distribution is located at 3240 Torgersen Hall. You can use any computer operating system that can run Mathematica, including GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, or Windoz. The course instructor will be using GNU/Linux most of the time.
In as much as is practical, the documents of this course will be kept on the web at /classes/phys3356_2005_spring/.
Students will be required to develop web-based documents as part of their graded course work.
Given that this course is in part a seminar, the grading will have some components that tend to be more subjective than is typical of a physics course.
Students are encouraged to send email to me at lanceman@phys.vt.edu. Students are encouraged to use email to help each other in doing course work. There is a course listserv at PHYS3356_14169@listserv.vt.edu. If you wish to sent email to the whole class, use it. If you're not on this listserv please let me know and I'll add you.
The honor code pertains to all aspects of this course. You are encouraged to work with others in studying the material and discussing homework and other course related problems, but all work (exams, homework, reports, and web reports) turned in under your name must be your own work.
1 This course was part seminar in the Spring of 2003, as taught by Associate Professor Bruce Vogelaar and before that in the Fall of 2001, by Professor Joseph Slawny.