
Full class meets 2 times per week in FL2-208
 MW 5:30–6:50 PM
▪ Lectures
▪ PowerPoint presentations
▪ Lecture materials will be made available on the web
▪ Work out example problems and questions
▪ Demonstrations

Laboratory section meets twice a week following
lecture
 MW 7:00–8:20 PM: FL2-208
▪ Opportunity for discussions on course material, exam prep, etc.

Your Fellow Students!
 Encouraged to work together on homework, exercises (but
not on exams!)

Tutoring: Tutoring center located in Aspen Hall room FL1108 or the Reading, Writing, and Math Center at Cypress
Hall FL2-239

Instructor!
 Office in FL2-208, office hours F 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM, or by
appointment
mondays@flc.losrios.edu

Web: flc.losrios.edu/~mondays
 Lecture presentations, updates, HW assignments/solutions

Text
 Physics, Sixth Edition, Giancoli
Explore the approach that physics brings to
bear on the world around us
1.



Scientific Method
Quantitative Models
Reductionism
Appreciate the influence physics has on us all
2.



3.



Begin to see physics in the world around you
Develop your natural intuition, stimulate
curiosity
Think into the unknown (ooh that’s scary!)
Understand basic laws of physics
Newton’s laws of motion, gravitation
Concepts of mass, force, acceleration, energy,
momentum, power, etc.
Fluid mechanics, mechanical waves (including
sound), and thermodynamics.

Science is as much about questions as answers.
 You may have questions about:
▪ Something you’ve always wondered about
▪ Something you recently noticed
▪ Something that class prompted you to think about
 Goal is to increase your awareness, observational
skills, analytical skills
▪ We’re immersed in physics: easy to ignore, but also easy to
see!
▪ You’ll begin to think more deeply before shoving problem
aside
▪ Allow your natural curiosity to come alive


Attend lectures and laboratory section
Participate!
 If it doesn’t make sense, ask! Everyone learns that
way.
 Don’t be bashful about answering questions posed.

Do the work:
 It’s the only way this stuff will really sink in
 exams become easier

Explore, think, ask, speculate, admire, enjoy!
 Physics can be fun
• No one who came more than 80% of time did very poorly
• Few who came infrequently got more than a low B

An attempt to rationalize the observed
Universe in terms of irreducible basic
constituents or simplest form, interacting via
basic forces.
 Reductionism!


An evolving set of (sometimes contradictory!)
organizing principles, theories, that are
subjected to experimental tests.
This has been going on for a long time.... with
considerable success

Attempt to find unifying principles and
properties e.g., gravitation:
Kepler’s laws of
planetary motion
Falling apples
Universal
Gravitation
“Unification” of forces

Physics is always on the move
 theories that long stood up to experiment are shot
down

But usually old theory is good enough to
describe all experiments predating the new
trouble-making experiment
 otherwise it would never have been adopted as a
theory


Ever higher precision pushes incomplete
theories to their breaking points
Result is enhanced understanding
 deeper appreciation/insight
Engineering
Biology
Geology
Chemistry
Astronomy
Physical
Reality
Abstraction
Our
Universe



First Up – Review
Next Lectures – Kinematics
Assignments:
 Check out course web page:
▪ flc.losrios.edu/~mondays
 Reading:
▪ Giancoli, Chapter 1

Units
 Any measurement or quantitative statement
requires a standard to compare with to determine
its quantity
▪ If I go a speed of 30, how fast am I going?
▪ Mi/hr. km/hr, ft/sec
 Units help us to quantify against a known
standard




Basis of testing theories in science
Need to have consistent systems of units for
the measurements
Uncertainties are inherent
Need rules for dealing with the uncertainties

Standardized systems
 agreed upon by some authority, usually a
governmental body

SI -- Systéme International
 agreed to in 1960 by an international committee
 main system used in this course
 also called mks for the first letters in the units of
the fundamental quantities

cgs -- Gaussian system
 named for the first letters of the units it uses for
fundamental quantities

US Customary
 everyday units (ft, etc.)
 often uses weight, in pounds, instead of mass as a
fundamental quantity

Three basic quantitative measurements
 Length
 Mass
 Time

All units can be reduced to these three units!

Units
 SI -- meter, m
 cgs -- centimeter, cm
 US Customary -- foot, ft

Defined in terms of a meter -- the distance
traveled by light in a vacuum during a given
time (1/299 792 458 s)

Units
 SI -- kilogram, kg
 cgs -- gram, g
 USC -- slug, slug

Defined in terms of kilogram, based on a
specific Pt-Ir cylinder kept at the International
Bureau of Standards

Units
 seconds, s in all three systems

Defined in terms of the oscillation of
radiation from a cesium atom
(9 192 631 700 times frequency of light emitted)
Dimension denotes the physical nature of a
quantity
 Technique to check the correctness of an
equation
 Dimensions (length, mass, time, combinations)
can be treated as algebraic quantities

 add, subtract, multiply, divide
 quantities added/subtracted only if have same units

Both sides of equation must have the same
dimensions

Dimensions for commonly used quantities
Length
Area
Volume
Velocity (speed)
Acceleration

L
L2
L3
L/T
L/T2
m (SI)
m2 (SI)
m3 (SI)
m/s (SI)
m/s2 (SI)
Example of dimensional analysis
distance = velocity · time
L
= (L/T) · T


When units are not consistent, you may need
to convert to appropriate ones
Units can be treated like algebraic quantities
that can cancel each other out
1 mile = 1609 m = 1.609 km
1m = 39.37 in = 3.281 ft
1 ft = 0.3048 m = 30.48 cm
1 in = 0.0254 m = 2.54 cm
Example 2. Trip to Canada:
Legal freeway speed limit in Canada is 100 km/h.
What is it in miles/h?
100
km
km 1 mile
miles
 100

 62
h
h 1.609 km
h


Prefixes correspond to powers of 10
Each prefix has a specific name/abbreviation
Power
Prefix Abbrev.
1015
109
106
103
10-2
10-3
10-6
10-9
peta
giga
mega
kilo
centi
milli
micro
nano
P
G
M
k
P
m
m
n
Distance from Earth to nearest star
Mean radius of Earth
Length of a housefly
Size of living cells
Size of an atom
40 Pm
6 Mm
5 mm
10 mm
0.1 nm
Example: An aspirin tablet contains 325 mg of acetylsalicylic acid.
Express this mass in grams.
Given:
m = 325 mg
Find:
m (grams)=?
Solution:
Recall that prefix “milli” implies 10-3, so

There is uncertainty in every measurement,
this uncertainty carries over through the
calculations
 need a technique to account for this uncertainty

We will use rules for significant figures to
approximate the uncertainty in results of
calculations



A significant figure is one that is reliably known
All non-zero digits are significant
Zeros are significant when
 between other non-zero digits
 after the decimal point and another significant figure
 can be clarified by using scientific notation
17400  1.74 10 4
3 significant figures
17400.  1.7400 10 4
5 significant figures
17400.0  1.74000 10 4
6 significant figures

Accuracy -- number of significant figures
Example:

meter stick:
 0.1 cm
When multiplying or dividing, round the result to the
same accuracy as the least accurate measurement
2 significant figures
Example:

rectangular plate: 4.5 cm by 7.3 cm
area: 32.85 cm2
33 cm2
When adding or subtracting, round the result to the
smallest number of decimal places of any term in the
sum
Example: 135 m + 6.213 m = 141 m

Approximation based on a number of assumptions
 may need to modify assumptions if more precise results are
needed
Question: McDonald’s sells about 250 million packages of fries
every year. Placed end-to-end, how far would the fries reach?
Solution: There are approximately 30 fries/package, thus:
(30 fries/package)(250 . 106 packages)(3 in./fry) ~ 2 . 1010 in ~ 5 . 108 m,
which is greater then Earth-Moon distance (4 . 108 m)!

Order of magnitude is the power of 10 that applies
Example: John has 3 apples, Jane has 5 apples.
Their numbers of apples are “of the same order of magnitude”
opposite side
sin  
hypotenuse
adjacent side
cos  
sin
hypotenuse
opposite side
tan  
adjacent side

Pythagorean Theorem
Known: angle and one side
Find: another side
Key: tangent is defined via two sides!
Fig. 1.7, p.14
Slide 13

height of building
,
dist .
height  dist .  tan   (tan 39.0 )( 46.0 m)  37.3 m
tan  


Used to describe the position of a point in
space
Coordinate system (frame) consists of
 a fixed reference point called the origin
 specific axes with scales and labels
 instructions on how to label a point relative to the
origin and the axes




Cartesian
Plane polar
Spherical
Cylindrical
also called rectangular
coordinate system
 x- and y- axes
 points are labeled (x,y)

 origin and reference line
are noted
 point is distance r from
the origin in the
direction of angle , ccw
from reference line
 points are labeled (r,)

Looking at the figure, we can see that
cos  
x
r
sin  
y
r
leading to the relationship
x  r cos

y  r sin 
This is how you would change polar coordinates to
rectangular coordinates.

Looking at the figure, we can also see that
r x y
2
2
2
tan  
tan

1
y
x
y

x
This is how you would change rectangular
coordinates to polar coordinates.

Find the rectangular coordinates of the point P whose
polar coordinates are (6, 2p/3).
Find the rectangular coordinates of the point P whose
polar coordinates are (6, 2p/3).
 Since r = 6 and  = 2p/3, we have

x  6 cos( 23p )
y  6 sin( 23p )
x  6(  )
y  6( 23 )
x  3
y3 3
1
2