Mechanics paper

2021

Give a copy of your paper to:

  • Lucas $\to$ Leandro $\to$ Trevor $\to$ Drew $\to$ Lucas
  • Samuel SE$\to$ Sam St $\to$ Emma $\to$ Brian $\to$ Samuel SE

Schedule a time starting Nov 22 Conference with Paul about your draft.

Pick a problem

Chose a or 3-star problem from the textbook sections that we cover.

  • You must pick your own problem: No two people will work the same problem.
  • You *may* consult other people about your problem.
  • Write up a solution with equations, diagrams as appropriate, and text which explains the approach you took to the problem, and references the physical principles you're using.

You're using ${\color{#393}\LaTeX}$ within markdown cells to write with math. Actually CoCalc uses (just like my notes here) MathJax which is a dialect of $\LaTeX$ for web pages. Here is a short and dense:

You'll prepare a first draft and give/receive feedback from one other classmate. The first draft may be hand-written, but should be organized and complete (except for the problem exposition). On the due date you'll bring 2 paper copies of your draft to class. One for Paul, and one for someone else in the class to read and respond to.

The first draft is required. You will receive feedback, but no grade on your first draft. But, If you don't hand in your first draft on time, your final draft grade will go down by 25%.

You'll write up your final draft in LaTeX (in a CoCalc Jupyter notebook) standard math typography conventions. Some of your diagrams might still be hand-made in your final draft.

Here is an example Final draft - problem writeup (Thermodynamics) (*.pdf file).

What to include

Paul will use these categories to grade the final draft:

(${}^*$ means "only required on the final draft"--though it sure wouldn't hurt to put thi in on the first draft!)
  • ${}^*$Exposition of the problem - Copy out the statement of the problem. Use a different font to visually distinguish the statement of the problem (verbatim from the book) from your work. Label the problem with chapter and problem number.
  • Context and Motivation - Write up something about the general physical principles that the problem illustrates. Is there a physics / engineering problem that this problem addresses or models?
  • Narration of the problem - Write for an audience which you can think of as other students in this class, that is, folks who have some general familiarity with the material from the course.
    • Start with a short "roadmap" of how you're going to solve the problem.
    • Name the principles and techniques you're using to solve the problem in each section of your problem.
    • You may refer to equations in the textbook: When you do, give Taylor's equation number, as well as some context: say where such an equation comes from and/or under what special circumstances you can use it.
    • Use CoCalc to actually carry out any calculations more complicated than elementary algebra or elementary integrals.
  • Diagrams and plots - Use a diagram to sketch out the physical system, and label the names of quantities (angles, coordinates, etc). You may hand draw this (even for the ${}^*$final draft)! Include plots of functions as appropriate, for example to indicate maxima or minima, or show a trajectory, or a potential energy curve, or otherwise enlighten the problem in some way.
  • Grammar and spelling
    • Use a more formal voice than when speaking, e.g. "a maxima" not "a max", "substitute in" rather than "plug in".
    • Punctuation in physics papers is a unique issue. You should punctuate equations as if they were any other part of your writing: periods or commas frequently go at the end of a displayed equation.
    • Spelling: I haven't yet figured out if spell checking is possible on CoCalc[*]. Until that happens, copying text into a Word Doc or Google Doc may be the short term answer to spell check your text.

      is an nbextension that does spell checking. Anyone have any luck? Possible approaches: a.) Compose a .tex document in Cocalc. There, spell checking is turned on. b.) there's an "nbextension" to do spell checking. Can nbextensions be added to CoCalc Jupyter notebooks?

  • Correctness of your solution - Gotta make sure you do the problem right! Do some sort of "sanity check" on your results. You should include this as part of your writeup too.
  • References and Citations - You may consult with other people about your problem. Make sure to acknowledge who you consulted with!

    You may use textbooks, other paper resources, or resources on the Internet. Make sure you cite the resources you refer to. The same considerations of acknowledging your sources, and clearly distinguishing what is your work and what insights came from others apply to this paper, as for any written paper you submit for a humanities course. Show your integrity by showing your debt to others, and avoid plagiarism!

  • Math typesetting / notation -
    • Use real subscripts (not t0 when you mean $t_0$).
    • ${}^*$Greek letters are generally available in LaTeX as e.g. \theta, \beta etc.
    • In your final draft you should use LaTeX (within markdown cells) for all symbol references.
    • Distinguish visually between vector and scalar quantities: scalars are usually displayed as non-bold italic quantities. Vector quantities are non-italic, and either have a little arrow over them, e.g. $\myv{b}$, or else appear as bold face, e.g. $\bf{b}$.
    • Number equations that you end up referring back to. (Not necessarily every equation).