Agronomy 405/505
Spring 2013
Problem Set 1
Due Tuesday, January 22, 2013.
Assigned January 15, 2013. Revised (Question 8b) January 20.
1. Review “Style Conventions” and Tables 1 through 4 in “Guide for Metric Practice” linked on
the course website.
Write out the unit ccd in full (i.e. how it would be written without using abbreviations).
Write two correct forms of the abbreviation for the units “kilograms per square meter.”
Use the “Guide for Metric Practice” as the authority for the rest of the course: there are
mistakes in Chapter 1 of Campbell and Norman regarding units. (If you find mistakes in the
book, let me know, we’ll compile a list.)
2. 1.1 in Campbell and Norman.
3. 1.2 in Campbell and Norman.
4. 1.3 in Campbell and Norman.
5. 1.4 in Campbell and Norman.
6. Simplify the following equation.
d
dx
Z
x
f (k) dk
(1)
a
7. A short tutorial for MATLAB written by one of my former professors is available on the course
webpage in either PDF or HTML. Read and do the examples in MATLAB. Please read up to
(and including) Section 3.2, Scripts and Functions. Then read Section 5, Advanced Graphics.
Finally read Section 7, Efficiency in MATLAB. Recreate Figures 1 through 5 and 7, insert
them into a word processor, and print them out on one or two sheets of paper.
8. Read “The Kilogram, Reinvented” from the IEEE Spectrum magazine, linked on the course
website.
(a) What is wrong with the kilogram?
(b) What three (not four) other SI base units may be redefined in the near future?
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