Special Lunch Time talk, Week 25 Tue. Apr. 30, noon – 1pm

On Tuesday April 30 from noon – 1pm in Purce Lecture Hall Classroom 5, we’ll join the students in Matter & Motion to hear a lecture from Dr. Danielle McDermott of Pacific University in Portland OR, tentatively titled “Studying Swarms and Flows with Active Colloid Models”.

Faculty will provide lunch (you can probably guess what). Please plan to attend if you are not already committed at that time.

We will shift the afternoon CM class to be 1:15 – 3:15 that day, so please mark your calendars accordingly.

Sunday tutoring

The Sunday tutoring session from 4 – 6pm in the Cave has had zero attendees for the past few sessions. If no-one attends this Sunday’s session, we will discuss cancelling Sunday tutoring for the remainder of the quarter.

APS NW Section Meeting at WWU, May 16-18

  • The Northwest Section Meeting of the American Physical Society takes place on May 16 – 18 at Western Washington University in Bellingham.
  • PSAM students are invited to consider attending this meeting, but not required.
  • I will arrange for a van. We will leave Thu. May 16 after class, and return late Sat. May 18.
  • Students are responsible for arranging and paying for their own registration, though I am glad to support you should you need.
  • Those of us going will need to discuss/figure out lodging options.

Frames of Reference and Centrifugal Forces

The classic movie Frames of Reference has a good discussion of non-inertial reference frames and centrifugal forces. This has come up a bit for us a few times already, and we’ll delve into it deeply in Taylor Chapter 9. The entire film is really amazing and I encourage you to watch it when you have half an hour, but the particular part relevant for centrifugal forces is a gripping five minute segment from 17:00 – 22:00.

Updated Spring Syllabus

  • The Updated Spring Syllabus reflects our discussion on Thursday afternoon, with one exception detailed below.
  • One adjustment is for the optional Academic Statement Workshop. In our discussion, we had placed it Week 30 Monday afternoon. I moved it to Week 29 Tuesday afternoon, after the EM Quixam E9 Workshop. This allows the afternoon of Week 30 Monday to be truly open/release. As discussed before, I will be available during that open/release time.
  • Feel free to update your paper copy from Thursday, or just print out your own copy of the Spring Syllabus.