Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2010 PHYS 1441-002, Fall 2010 Dr. Jaehoon Yu 1 PHYS 1441 – Section 002 Lecture #2 Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2010 Dr. Jaehoon Yu • Brief history of physics • Uncertainties • Significant Figures • Standards and units • Dimensional AnalysisAnnouncements • Homework registration – 62/77 registered as of noon today • 24/62 submitted the homework – You MUST register AND submit the answer for 100% credit – Homework registration closes tomorrow, Thursday, at midnight Please do this ASAP!! • E-mail subscription – 42/77 subscribed! • 5 point extra credit if done by midnight tonight • 3 point extra credit if done by midnight Friday – Many of you CCed me. This confuses the system. So please do not do this but follow the instruction on the class web page. • No class coming Monday, Sept. 6 • Reading assignment Appendices A.1 – A.8 – Remember the quiz at the beginning of the class next Wednesday, Sept. 8Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2010 3 PHYS 1441-002, Fall 2010 Dr. Jaehoon Yu 3 Brief History of Physics • AD 18th century: – Newton’s Classical Mechanics: A theory of mechanics based on observations and measurements • AD 19th Century: – Electricity, Magnetism, and Thermodynamics • Late AD 19th and early 20th century (Modern Physics Era) – Einstein’s theory of relativity: Generalized theory of space, time, and energy (mechanics) – Quantum Mechanics: Theory of atomic phenomena • Physics has come very far, very fast, and is still progressing, yet we’ve got a long way to go – What is matter made of? – How do matters get mass? – How and why do matters interact with each other? – How is universe created?Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2010 4 PHYS 1441-002, Fall 2010 Dr. Jaehoon Yu 4 Models, Theories and Laws • Models: An analogy or a mental image of a phenomena in terms of something we are familiar with – Thinking light as waves, behaving just like water waves – Often provide insights for new experiments and ideas • Theories: More systematically improved version of models – Can provide quantitative predictions that are testable and more precise • Laws: Certain concise but general statements about how nature behaves – Energy conservation – The statement must be found experimentally valid to become a law • Principles: Less general statements of how nature behaves – Has some level of arbitrarinessWednesday, Sept. 1, 2010 5 5 Uncertainties • Physical measurements have limited precision, no matter how good they are, due to: – Number of measurements – Quality of instruments (meter stick vs micro-meter) – Experience of the person doing measurements – Etc • In many cases, uncertainties are more important and difficult to estimate than the central (or mean) values Stat.{ {Syst. PHYS 1441-002, Fall 2010 Dr. Jaehoon YuWednesday, Sept. 1, 2010 6 6 Significant Figures • Significant figures denote the precision of the measured values – Significant figures: non-zero numbers or zeros that are not place-holders • 34, 34.2, 0.001, 34.100 – 34 has two significant digits – 34.2 has 3 – 0.001 has one because the 0’s before 1 are place holders – 34.100 has 5, because the 0’s after 1 indicates that the numbers in these digits are indeed 0’s. • When there are many 0’s, use scientific notations for simplicity: – 31400000=3.14x107 – 0.00012=1.2x10-4 PHYS 1441-002, Fall 2010 Dr. Jaehoon YuWednesday, Sept. 1, 2010 7 7 Significant Figures • Operational rules: – Addition or subtraction: Keep the smallest number of decimal place in the result, independent of the number of significant digits: 12.001+ 3.1= – Multiplication or Division: Keep the smallest significant figures in the result: 12.001 x 3.1 = , because the smallest significant figures is ?. 15.1 37 What does this mean? The worst precision determines the precision the overall operation!! PHYS 1441-002, Fall 2010 Dr. Jaehoon YuWednesday, Sept. 1, 2010 8 PHYS 1441-002, Fall 2010 Dr. Jaehoon Yu 8 Needs for Standards and UnitsWednesday, Sept. 1, 2010 9 PHYS 1441-002, Fall 2010 Dr. Jaehoon Yu 9 Definition of Three Relevant Base Units One second is the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the Cesium 133 (C133) atom. 1 s (Time) It is equal to the mass of the international prototype of the kilogram, made of platinum-iridium in International Bureau of Weights and Measure in France. 1 kg (Mass) = 1000 g One meter is the length of the path traveled by light in vacuum during the time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second. 1 m (Length) = 100 cm Definitions SI Units • There are total of seven base quantities (see table 1-5 in page 10) • There are prefixes that scales the units larger or smaller for convenience (see pg. 9) • Units for other quantities, such as Newtons for force and Joule for energy, for ease of useWednesday, Sept. 1, 2010 10 PHYS 1441-002, Fall 2010 Dr. Jaehoon Yu 10 Prefixes, expressions and their meanings • deci (d): 10-1 • centi (c): 10-2 • milli (m): 10-3 • micro (µ): 10-6 • nano (n): 10-9 • pico (p): 10-12 • femto (f): 10-15 • atto (a): 10-18 • zepto (z): 10-21 • yocto (y): 10-24 • deca (da): 101 • hecto (h): 102 • kilo (k): 103 • mega (M): 106 • giga (G): 109 • tera (T): 1012 • peta (P): 1015 • exa (E): 1018 • zetta (Z): 1021 • yotta (Y): 1024 Larger SmallerWednesday, Sept. 1, 2010 11 PHYS 1441-002, Fall 2010 Dr. Jaehoon Yu 11 International Standard Institutes • International Bureau of Weights and Measure http://www.bipm.fr/ – Base unit definitions: http://www.bipm.fr/enus/3_SI/base_units.html – Unit Conversions: http://www.bipm.fr/enus/3_SI/ • US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) http://www.nist.gov/Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2010 12 PHYS 1441-002, Fall 2010 Dr. Jaehoon Yu 12 How do we convert quantities from one unit to another? Unit 1 = Unit 2 Conversion factor X 1 inch 2.54 cm 1 inch 0.0254 m 1 inch 2.54x10-5 km 1 ft 30.3 cm 1 ft 0.303 m 1 ft 3.03x10-4 km 1 hr 60 minutes 1 hr 3600 seconds And many More Here….Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2010 13 PHYS 1441-002, Fall 2010 Dr.
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