Week 4

Read: Beams, bones and giants (ASGv2 Chap. 7) and Naturally accelerated motion (ASGv2 Chap. 8).

Key topics: strength of materials, beam breaking, uniform acceleration,
Homework
  1. Automobile problem: A 1500 kg automobile has a wheel base (distance between wheels) of 3 meters. The center of mass of the automobile is on at the center line at a point 1.2 meters behind the front axle. Find the force exerted by the ground on each wheel.
  2. forestry (6.6),
  3. limestone pillar (7.1a),
  4. truth and error (8.1),
  5. motion sketching (8.2),
  6. PHY 201: limestone pillar (7.1 b),
  7. PHY 201: equation of motion for falling bodies (8.3)

Lab:
Beam breaking (Ex. 6.8). There has been some interesting work on fracture of spaghetti noodles published in scientific journals lately.

Extras: High winds level forests. Here is a relevant 2016 article by French physicists about the critical wind speed at which trees break. They cite the work of Galileo. Also: here is a nice modern discussion of how living organisms' anatomy varies with their size. This approach is largely derived from Galileo's discussion of scaling in his Dialogues.

Chapter 7 (2 videos):





Chapter 8 (6 videos)

















Physics 1