General Physics: Mechanics

Description

The student is introduced to the physical phenomena and laws of nature and to simple methods and ways of reasoning, which are necessary for acquiring and linking the topics of the course. He/She learns to recognize the physical nature of very different phenomena, which should lead to a better understanding and it should train and develop the student's analytical skills. The students will acquire a useful and ready knowledge, necessary for dealing with physical questions that arise in the most diverse areas of science. At the same time they build up a background, which enables them to further develop their physical knowledge (formal structure, advanced mathematical treatment, specific experimental skills will not be discussed). The student should focus on gaining insight into the models in order to explain reality, in particular the role of the physical concepts herein and the relationships between those concepts. In this course, General Physics, mechanical phenomena are discussed. After following this course: 1) students can themselves formulate the basic laws of mechanics (Newton, Kepler, Archimedes, Bernouilli), both mathematically and in words, and describe how these appear in everyday life and solve problems on these; 2) students can define the concepts from the course and use them in a correct manner (a.o. inertial frame, ficticious forces, work, energy, conservative force, angular momentum, impulse, decibels); 3) students can themselves convert a question into a mechanics problem concerning Newtonian kinematics in two dimensions and solve it; 4) students can correctly define basic laws in mechanics in which vectors and their products appear, work with these expressions and show their geometric meaning (e.g. work by a variable force, line of action, angular momentum); 5) students can solve challenging problems in 2 dimensions that include friction, gravity, pulling forces, spring forces, centripetal and reaction forces, by drawing free body diagrams, derive the mathematical equations and subsequently solve them; 6) students can draw the analogy between laws for translation and rotation, and derive mathematically the links between both; 7) students can show mathematically the relation between dynamics of point masses and rigid bodies, en thus motivate the emergence of quantities such as center of mass and moment of inertia; 8) students can list and consider different solution options for a ‘difficult’ mechanics problem (conservation laws vs. force balance, kinematics vs. dynamics) and based thereupon make a suitable choice to tackle the problem; 9) students can solve simple questions about liquids and sound; 10) students can describe simple oscillations and wave phenomena in words and with math, and discuss their importance in applications.