/physics133.html     a free edit of /poster133.tex

                             NEW COURSE
              High Points of Physics for Beginners
  Begins 11am Tuesday January 21, 2003, in Room 228 (Physics)
              T,R 11:00-12:15
            No prerequisites, undergraduate, 3 credits
           taught by Elihu Lubkin, Assoc.Prof., Physics

o  amount of motion before energy
o  gravity and planets early on: Newton backwards to Kepler
o  idea of disorder before temperature
o  electricity freed from its clumsy language
o  from the warm harmonic oscillator to energy levels
o  stars and things in the sky if we have time

My reason for creating this class was to chart my own course through
the logic of physics, following history where that helps out.
Our text (Bookstore) was chosen for its happy early emphasis
on the conservation of momentum (1600's)---books usually and unwisely
toss conservation of energy (1800's) at you first.

Where textbook and I part company, we will use my own brief handouts.
eli@uwm.edu            and           www.uwm.edu/~eli
There follows some more I left off the poster:

...handouts mostly saved from my experience teaching other elementary courses.
Thus my way of building thermodynamics by starting with the idea that
things tend to get disorderly, while easy and basic, is not to my
knowledge done by anyone else  *writing*for*beginners* .
     Our scope: mechanics, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, relativity,
and the atomic revolution, is not unusual; perhaps a little on stars
and things in the sky, if we have time.  But the way we will
visit those usual things will be unusual where I feel out a better
road to clarity.

     Perhaps the most fun is how simple the
story of electricity and magnetism becomes when we map it using Faraday's
language and my units named in the spirit of Faraday's lines and tubes
of force, which draw the parallel
between electricity and magnetism sharply---we will
avoid the three kluges which
poison the usual ``Systeme Internationale (SI)'' of units---so we kick out
volt, ampere, ohm, coulomb, farad, and like futile complexities!
Here is where teaching mostly non-science students
is an advantage, because that sick SI complexity is needed if you are
trying to fit out a lab (or to replace your gas fixtures by electrical
ones), as SI is spoken in the hardware store.
Of course I hope some of you will be stimulated to join us in
science---indeed an aim of this course---and who hasn't already met up
with the volt?

     So the course is an adventure in science for those
eager for an adventure, along
a road only partly marked out by a text---but rather guided by
lectures and handouts---a road to insights usually saved for
second or even third passes over the territory.
     I am particularly fond of my handout on Kepler's ellipses, where
balances of forces and energies are used to build your knowledge of the
ellipse, even if you begin not knowing the ellipse.  As in
history, you build ability to handle laws of mechanics on motion of planets.
     And my notes build the otherwise vague notion of
temperature from the familiar notion that things are getting more
disorderly all the time: it is surprising how such a seemingly
ordinary platitude gets us right to temperature!  The measure
of disorder named entropy by Rudolf Clausius, about 1865, in 1900 counts out
how many energy levels a system has, and now also counts bits of information.
Entropy as hot stuff is measured in calories per degree---which sounds
complicated, no?---yet when tallied in bits sounds both more up in the air
and more down-to-earth friendly.

     Why not get it right the first time?  My philosophy is that if I
understand it, then I can get it across to those equally stubborn in
sticking to an issue until it becomes theirs.

On 10dec2002 got bookstore to order 30copies of Kirkpatrick and Wheeler,
 ``PHYSICS:  A World View'' but the 4th 2001 edition.  Listed
as REQuired.  That would be for the phy133 spring 2003.  Bookstore
text area opens to students on Jan 13 2003.
ISBN: 0-03-028281-0  pp784 $107.95 retail(Publisher)
I plan to put a copy on reserve at the Library.

Physics 133   :  High points of Physics for beginners:  Momentum
before energy, entropy before temperature, electricity without volts,
how the warm harmonic oscillator gave us quantum mechanics.

Note: Physics 133 was approved only after the catalogue was printed,
but you can register for it anyhow.

The ``high points'' are where physics changed its mind, so that
focusing them smoothes the road to understanding---it is no rocky road!


eli    Elihu Lubkin, Associate Professor, Dept. of Physics