Links for NST IB Physics B `Classical Dynamics'
Handouts and Corrections |
Books |
Resources
20 lectures (4 at the end of Michaelmas term, 16 more from the
start of Lent term): F, M, W at 9:00am in the Cockcroft Lecture
Theatre, New Museums site.
The handouts, examples sheets etc. for this course will be
available the
course
page of the Cavendish
Teaching website, for registered users.
There are some corrections for the
printed handouts/examples sheets.
There are many books suitable for this course, including the following:
Plus, many topics from this course are covered in the Feynman &
Leighton, Feynman Lecture
Notes on Physics.
|
Volume I (Mainly mechanics, radiation and heat).
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Volume II (Mainly electromagnetism and matter).
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The full text of both of these -- and of Volume III (Quantum mechanics) -- are
freely available here to read online.
Also, you can view some of Feynman's lectures from 1964, recorded by
the BBC, on the the Project Tuva
website (requires Microsoft Silverlight to be installed), which have
various interactive extras.
As the course progress, below I will put links to resources on the
Web that relate to various topics discussed in the lectures, as the
course progresses. Some are links to published papers, the full text for
which is either freely available, or should be available via the
University's subscription, if accessed from cam.ac.uk
addresses.
Rotating Frames:
- [animations] Foucault pendulum in different reference frames:
stationary building, rotating building, the Sun.
(I made these
using the source code available on the Wikipedia page on the Foucault
pendulum, but making a bigger version, more visible lines, and
animating over a longer period.)
- [video] Helen Czerski on the BBC, explaining
the Coriolis effect, for hurricanes/roundabouts, from
BBC
Learning Zone (5m27s).
- [video] `Bath-tub' vortex in the `Vorticity (1 of 2)' film
(from about 19m47s to 22m40s), from the National Committee for Fluid
Mechanics Films.
(I put `bath-tub' in quotes,
because it isn't a real bath-tub!)
- [papers] Three papers on the `Bath-tub' vortex.
- Shapiro, A. H., 1962, `Bath-Tub
Vortex', Nature, 196, 1080.
- Binnie, A. M., 1964, `Some Experiments
on the Bath-Tub Vortex', Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science,
6, 256.
- Trefethen, L. M. et al., 1964, `The Bath-Tub
Vortex in the Southern Hemisphere', Nature, 207, 1084.
Orbits:
- [book] Goodstein, D. L. & Goodstein, J. R., 1997, `Feynman's
Lost Lecture: The Motions of Planets Around the Sun'.
- [papers] on Rutherford scattering.
- Geiger, H. & Marsden, E., 1909, `On a
Diffuse Reflection of the α-Particles', Proceedings of the
Royal Society of London. Series A, 82, 495.
- Rutherford, E., 1911, `The scattering of α and β particles by matter and the
structure of the atom', Philosophical Magazine, Series 6, 21, 669.
- [java simulation] The orbit of the former planet Pluto,
from NASA (I'd suggest you select `All Orbits' for the `Orbits:' choice
to show all planets in white, with Pluto in blue).
- [javascript animation] An illustration of `Mars
Cycler' (also called the `Aldrin cycler', after Eugene `Buzz'
Aldrin, who was the second astronaut on the Moon).
- [videos] Illustrating `evaporation' of globular cluster:
- [paper] Stephenson, F. R., 2002, `Harold
Jeffreys Lecture 2002: Historical eclipses and Earth's
rotation', Astronomy & Geophysics, 44, 2.22.
Rigid Body Rotation:
- [papers] Various papers on the `celt' (or `rattleback').
- Walker, G. T., 1895, `On a curious Dynamical Property of Celts',
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 8, 305.
- Walker, G. T., 1896, `On a dynamical top',
Quarterly Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, 28, 175.
- Bondi, H., 1986, `The Rigid Body
Dynamics of Unidirectional Spin', Proceedings of the Royal Society of
London, Series A, 405, 265.
- Garcia, A. & Hubbard, M., 1988, `Spin Reversal of the
Rattleback: Theory and Experiment', Proceedings of the Royal Society of
London, Series A, 418, 165.
- Nordmark, A. & Essén, H., 1999, `Systems
with preferred spin direction', Proceedings of the Royal Society of
London, Series A, 455, 933.
- [computer demonstrations] Interactive demonstrations of free
precession of a rigid body:
- using Poinsot's
construction (as a starting point, try $a,b$ set to minimum, $c$
about half way, $\theta$ about half way, $L$ about three quarters);
- or in body
or space frames (as a starting point, try $h \sim 0.7$, $r \sim
0.25$, $u \sim 0.3$, and slide time slowly, try with/without cones in
both space and body frames).
(These are both from Wolfram/Mathematica,
where you can download a cdf (`computable document format') viewer
or plugin to view the demonstrations.)
Normal Modes:
- [java applets] Visualisations of various normal modes:
- longitudinal waves for masses connected by springs;
- transverse waves on weighted string;
- waves on a circular membrane;
- waves on a square membrane.
(These are from this site, which
has other useful Java applets for visualising various
maths/physics.)
Elasticity:
Fluids:
- [video] A self-righting lifeboat.
- [video] For streamlines/streaklines etc. in fluid flow, see
the film on `Flow Visualization' from the National Committee for Fluid
Mechanics Films. Try from about 1m50s to 13m20s, but note that the
audio and video are a bit out of synchronisation in places.
- [paper] Newton's 1671/2 paper ...
containing his New Theory about Light and Colors ..., which includes
(p.3078) the text "... more or less curvity ... when I remembered that I
had often seen a Tennis ball, struck with an oblique Racket, describe
such a curve line", i.e. in modern terms, the Magnus effect.
- [animation] Interacting triple
vortex rings, from images painted by James Clerk Maxwell - the first
Cavendish Professor of Physics - for display in his lensed Zoescope (from the 1860s), which is in the
Cavendish Museum. This is a model of atoms being ever lasting vortices,
and molecules being interacting vortices.
- [videos] Vortex rings:
- [webpage/animation] Drag on a
sphere (plus animation of Kármán vortex street).
Dave Green --
dag@mrao.cam.ac.uk (2016 February)
