This course explores recent work on chaos, fractals, complexity, and self-organization, exploring the impact of these new ideas on the conceptual foundations of the social sciences and humanities, as well as the natural sciences. Although the course is largely nonmathematical, students should be willing to use elementary high school algebra on occasion. Not open to students who took FS 030 during fall 2000. This course examines motion as it occurs throughout the universe. Topics covered include inertia, force, Newton's laws of motion, work and energy, linear momentum, collisions, gravitation, rotational motion, torque, angular momentum, and oscillatory motion.
Emphasis is on practical applications in physics, engineering, the life sciences, and everyday life.
Laboratory work and lecture demonstrations illustrate basic physical principles. The physical principles of electricity and magnetism are developed and applied to the electrical structure of matter and the electromagnetic nature of light. Practical topics from electricity and magnetism include voltage, current, resistance, capacitance, inductance, and AC and DC circuits. Laboratory work includes an introduction to electronics and to important instruments such as the oscilloscope. This lecture and laboratory course covers concepts from classical physics which are not included in PH 109 and PH 110, and serves as a bridge between those two courses.