TAM 203, Spring 2002
Old news
* Check your grades (records updated May 13). All of your grades (prelims, labs, HW) as we now have them recorded are on this Excell spread sheet. They are sorted by your prelim scores. Please check all your grades and note any discrepancies. Bring a list of these, with documentation, to Ishan Sharma If you have questions ask Ishan <is42@cornell.edu>.
* Bonus assignment is on the homework page at the end.
* Final Exam today at 3 is in MN (Morrison Hall) on the Ag Quad. (Building codes for other courses). Please put all papers, books, bags, etc at the side of the room. Keep with you writing tools and food. Please sit in columns. Closed book, no notes, no calculators, no extra time.
* An extra page of text, warning you not to show inertial forces on a FBD unless you really know what you are doing, has been added to the texts page, known errors page, below. Also here.
* Grading disputes (you think something was maybe graded unfairly) should be taken up with Ishan Sharma. Don't mark anything on your prelim. Know how to do the problem correctly. Bring your prelim and a note explaining your issue to Ishan at his office.
* Pick up old prelims, homeworks and labs in Kimball 212.
* When rescaling the homework for the final grade we will take account that rader Junjie gave about 91% as high scores as Guozhi for similar homework performance.
* Andy Ruina will be away from email for about 48 hours starting the evening of May 8.
* Lab makeups: One last chance, Friday May 10 at 2:30 PM.
* Office hours and reviews for the study and finals week are on the "who teaches what when" page.* Late homework, for up to half credit, will be accepted until Tuesday May 7 at 10 PM. Give it to your section TA and also send an email that you have left it. All the usual homework rules apply (see top of HW www page).
* Lab makeups: Some will be allowed between April 29 and May 3. Contact your lab TA to see if a time is available for you.
* Course Survey needs to be turned in between Thursday May 2 at noon and Tuesday May 7 at 4 PM to Sreemati Mukherjee in Kimball 212 to get one bonus point on your total course score. Some comments are needed in both boxes on back. Have your name checked off by Sreemati Muckherjee. All surveys will be stirred into one envelope and will be strictly anonymous. You can pick up a form in lecture on Thursday May 2 or in Kimball 212.
* Prelim 2 solutions posted wed April 17
* HW 12 comments: 9.3) thetadoubledot=0, 9.9a) solution in back of book is suspect.
* Solutions to HW 11 were sent to the class by email at 8:22 PM on April 15.
* Prelim 2 covers the whole course through HW due April 16. Solutions to HW 11 will be posted by 8 PM on April 15. *Prelim 2 Reviews: a) Sunday April 14, 2 PM, Thurston 203, Ruina question and answer, only for students who feel that they are behind. b) Sunday April 14, 8 PM, Thurston 203, Sharma.
* Note!: The graders have been told to only give credit for a homework/prelim problem if items d,e&g (FBDs, vectors, units) from HW directions are followed strictly .
* Check the texts WWW page for a few new text errors. Please point out any errors or defects you find.
* Too many students have got behind. There will be an in-class test on tuesday April 2 covering all the material in 203 this semester through homework 9. This will count for 20% of the course grade. If you choose not to take this test there will be a makeup, covering through homework 10, on Saturday in Thurston 203 from 5 AM to 5:50 AM. No extra time so as to be fair to those who take it in class .(Posted and retracted April 1, 2002).
* Turn in Prelim 1 by Thursday lecture (3/28) for regrade if your plot for problem 3c looks like the posted solutions and you got no credit for it.
* 2D mechanics in a 3D world. A student asked about this in lecture. There is a little essay on the topic on page 458 of the text.
* Prelim 1 solutions posted (see below)
*Prelim study advice: try to do homework problems from beginning to end with no help from book, notes, solutions, people, etc. All yourself without looking up even one thing. Explain, at least outloud to yourself, every step. This includes computer problems (ok if you have to use "help" online once or twice).Then try problems like homework problems.
*Lecture note errors from tues 2/19 in one student's notes, thus likely also on the board:
1) The magnitude of the gravity force from the earth M on a mass m should have been written F = GMm/r^2
= gmR^2/r^2 where R is the radius of the earth. 2) in the Newton derivation of "equal areas in equal times" the area of a triangle is one half the base times the height (a factor of 1/2 was missing a few times).
*Matlab sample from lecture Thursday 2/21 (the two body problem) is posted. Also a simple demo that primitively mimics ODE23. See "Software" below.
*Prelim 1 Review by Ishan Sharma was Sunday Feb 24, 8-9 PM, notes.
*Prelim 1 Review by Ishan Sharma Sunday Feb 24, 8-9 PM, Thurston 205.
*The text is in. If you signed up for a copy bring to Kimball 306: a) $55 cash or check made to Andy Ruina, b) a piece of paper with your printed name and email on it. Please have these ready before you come to pick up the book to save us waiting a minute 100 times. You need not have signed up. Books will be saved for those who signed up and committed to buy.
*Thursday optional section this week changed to Friday 5:15 PM-6:15 PM in the dynamics lab.
*Please come to section Wed Feb 20. We are trying to get our section lists updated and will take attendence. We will take attendence in the future also, but just to keep track of what is happening.
* The lab schedule is posted. Labs are now due a day later at 10 AM. See lab info.
* Solutions to HW 1, 2 and 3 are posted.
* Homework 4 error and hints: The symbols $'$ mean just '. That is [ 1 2 3]$'$ is supposed to be [1 2 3]'. Please see the end of the text preface for comments on "pseudo-code". See section 2.4, especially pages 58-59, about solving vector equations.
* The WWW version of book has been broken into 2 smaller pieces: 1) book with no problems, 2) just the problems.
* Solutions to HW 1 are posted on the HW page.
* The too-small class room. It seems we have to make the most of it. After the first overcrowded lecture on Jan 22 a search was made for a bigger room. None was available on the whole campus. Users of all bigger rooms, but one room in Ives, have more students. And the Ives group does not want to swap rooms. Again today (Feb 5) I asked the engineering registrar for help. Her best suggestion was to cap the enrollment, which I don't want to do. I have a request in to the central university scheduling, but was told that the odds of finding a bigger room are slim. Common experience with classes of this type is that lecture attendance does not hold up. But I don't want to encourage or hope for lower attendence. Cornell safety has been alerted about the crowding and told us we can no longer use folding chairs. So until we somehow find another room please feel free to sit on the floor in front and please sit with no space between you and the person centerwards of you in a row. If push comes to shove we will have to give bonuses like airlines do for overbooked flights; maybe people showing up by 10:10 and not getting a seat will get free photocopies of lecture notes, a free trip to Dryden, or something. But we will keep looking for a bigger room.
* Office hours etc. keep changing, eg. Wed optional section moved to Thursday, see "Who teaches when".
* Text ambiguities/errors are listed. You can get to these from the text WWW page.