Day 59 in MAT229

Today:

• Announcements:
  • HW 10 is returned.

  • Today we review.

  • Monday: "hour exam", over chapter 10 and 12 stuff.

    You may use your favorite calculator, and a one-page cheat sheet.

  • Next Thursday, 5/9 -- the comprehensive part

    You may use your favorite calculator, and a one-page cheat sheet.

  • Do you want a study session Wednesday night?
    • I'll be around from 7:30 to 9, Wednesday night. We'll try our classroom, and if there's a room conflict I'll leave a note telling you where to find the review.

• Today:
  • Yesterday we illustrated the power of calculus and these vector operations to demonstrate that planets travel in elliptical paths about the sun (more generally, we illustrated any "two-body" problem solution, e.g. Moon and Earth, etc.).

    We had to make simplifying assumptions, however -- and I hope that you realize that you've been lied to all your life -- not to be mean, of course, but because we had to "lie" in order to get useful results. All models are wrong; some models are useful.

    Here's some associated Mathematica code to illustrate the text, and extend it. (I finally got it to where I wanted it, including the acceleration vector, and some notes.)

  • Now let's take a look at a review of chapters 10 and 12 -- concepts and problems (Here's a pdf.)