AGRON 405/505 Spring 2015
Problem Set 1
Due Tuesday, January 20, 2015.
Assigned January 13, 2015.
1. Review “Style Conventions” and Tables 1 through 4 in “Guide for Metric Practice” linked on
the course website.
Write out the unit mmol 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 IEEE Spectrum and “A More Fundamental International System of Units” from Physics Today, both linked on the course website.
(a) From IEEE Spectrum:
i. What is wrong with the kilogram?
ii. What three (not four) other SI base units may be redefined in the near future?
(b) From Physics Today: what are the seven new SI base quantities?
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