TAM 203, Fall 2000
Dynamics for engineers: Cornell's "Courses of Study" official course description (with minor modifications).

Final grades: All scores for all students can be found on these Excel spread sheets. Find yourself by matching prelim scores.

Lectures: Andy Ruina <ruina@cornelledu>,      
Sections: David Russel: <dbr8@cornell.edu>,     
Labs: Wei Zou <wei@tam.cornell.edu>

Lab: See schedule outside the lab door. Buy the lab manual at the campus store and read the lab description before you come to the lab.

Office Hours in Thurston 102:  tuesday 2-4, 7-11 PM

Prelims:   1) 7:30 PM  Sept 26 (OH 165),  2) 7:30 PM Oct 24 (OH 165),     3) In class 9:05 AM Tues  Nov 21 (TH 203).
Final Exam: (comprehensive=cummulaitve) 12/12/00 3:00, PH 219

All tests are closed book, closed notes, no calculators. Front and back tables from book will be provided if useful. No time pressure in evening prelims. Students who can do all the homework problems on their own, with no reference to notes or books, will be able to do most of the prelim and final exam questions.

Prelim 1 covers through HW 4: Prelim 1 from last spring, its solution and grading comments.  Prelim 1 solutions and grading comments.

Prelim 2 will have 3 questions selected from these 4 topics: motion of one or more particles in space with springs and/or air friction and/or gravity, pulleys, rigid bodies in translation (car braking), circular motion (kinematics, LMB, AMB, Energy, but not moment of inertia). Questions from last semesters prelim 1 (above) and prelim2 (please see also its solution and grading comments) are some guide (Problem 3 in Prelim 2 is on material we haven't coverred yet). This prelim will be more different from last spring's prelim 2 than was the first prelim from last spring's prelim 1. No formulas will be provided, so you should know and know how to derive the polar coordinate velocity and acceleration formlas. There will be a question that is largely MATLAB and another that can be solved with MATLAB as an option. There will be no pictures given (you will have to read the words to make your own sketches). Prelim 2 Solution.

Prelim 3 will cover through the homework handed in the previous thursday. Possibly short answer or multiple choice questions. Cumulative.

Course handouts and downloads:

Text Download   (Part I, Part II, Part III , problembook)
Homework , reading guide, solutions.
Matlab sample code: text files to copy and try  (updated9/8/2000).

Final Grade:

50% prelims and homework (all four scaled to a common median, the lowest dropped);
35% final exam;
15% labs;
5%   The TA can add or subtract up to 5% for exceptional cases where they think the numbers do not reflect the knowledge the student has at the end of the semester.

Big spread sheet with all grade info. Some sheets have rescaled homeworks and prelims and some do not. Find your scores by looking up your prelim scores on a sheet where they are not scaled.

Write to TAM 203 Staff, or write directly to us (alr3) if you want an answer. Send ANONYMOUS comments if you want to tell us something but don't want us to know who you are (and to which we cannot respond to you).