This page is meant to be a guide to aid you in checking your understanding of the material for the coming Midterm. The first thing to state is that this test will probe your basic understanding of the most important concepts; it is not required that you have an in-depth understanding, or any calculational / quantitative ability. If you have been in the class and/or worked with the book you should not have any problems with the test. Only the material covered in the class – and covered in the book – can show up in the test. To avoid misunderstandings, a couple of comments are in order:
Some topics are covered in the book to a much greater extent than what we did in the class; possible test-questions thus would refer only to what was actually done in the class. For example. Chapter 1 covers the history of science in much more detail than what we talked about; possible test questions could come from what was in the class; Chapter 6 delves into (some) considerations of energy that we barely touched on in the class – this can only come up at the level of what we talked about. (And this is in the book.)
The opposite also bears a comment: things are mentioned in the class that are either not in the book or may be somewhere in the material that is excluded in the list below. For this test, none of them require special preparation: simply having heard them in the classroom is enough.
For your check/exercise, below is a list of questions that are particularly useful for your reviewing. (In principle, one should be able to asnwer almost all questions in the book; still, since some are a little more involved/detailed, some contain calculations, and some parts do not correspond to what we have covered, or not in as much detail, a selection is offered here.)
It is worth emphasizing that the book contains a lot of review material! Almost all “Concept Checks,” that are scattered throughout the text, are more than appropriate; in principle, I would imagine that one should be able to deal with all of them. (Just in case, let us say almost all.) A number of questions at the end of each chapter provides (much) more than what is needed for checking one's understanding: “Summary of Ideas and Terms” is useful in its own right (when it refers to what we discussed), “Review Questions” and “Conceptual Exercises” contain a large number, and a large variety, of questions. The list below should be thought of as means for checking your understanding of the material covered in the text. Being able to answer most of the questions on the list means that you do have sufficient command over the material, for this test.
To summarize: most “Concept Checks,” and many of “Review Questions” and “Conceptual Exercises” are useful and directly related to what we covered. The list below is a reasonable selection.
Note It is possible that a question that is actually too hard or involved, or unrelated, somehow sneaked in here or there; please use your good judgement. Not being able to deal with a few isolated questions cannot pose a problem; if you cannot answer a whole group of related questions though, then you may want to go back to the appropriate material in the book. If after looking at these you have doubts about their perceived difficulty by all means contact me: if you have been following the course so far, reading and such, and still feel that the questions below are too hard for you, I would suspect that there is a misunderstanding of what exactly is required. (You are not required to develop an in-depth understanding, and certainly no quantitative ability; only the qualitative understaing of the basic concepts is required.) Please look at the sample of test–type/level questions.
We did not spend much time on the material to be found in Chapter 1 and Chapter 2. As for the history of science – a fascinating subject in its own right! – sufficient for this test is a very basic and cursory understanding of how people perceived the nature and our place in it millenia ago: ancient 'science' and their thoughts of what we nowadays call the Universe. (At the level of a very concise summary of the most striking facts mentioned in the class.) The material (hinted on) in Chapter 2 we will cover, to a far greater depth. I recommend that you read it in its entirety; some sections are really effective and very well written! But so far we have barely laid some foundations, and you only need to have a basic idea (and some sense for microscopic scales).
Note Numbers given in parenthesis mean that those problems may be left out; they contain more involved ideas or detail, some calculations, or are formulated in a way that makes them hard to answer to. All of them are useful, but you do not have to consider them. Numbers that are in bold refer to problems that are particularly worth looking at, for one reason or another (sometimes even simply because they are so basic and easy!); numbers that are also underlined ... the same, but even more so.
Concept Check:
3 (p75), 6 (p77), 9, 10 (p79), 12–continues (11), 14 (p83)
Review Questions:
7, 8; 11; 12-14 (15,16); 17, 18, (19,20), 21;
Conceptual Exercises:
4, (5), 6, 8, 9, (10), 11, (13); 18,
(22 – compare fig3.13 with fig 3.15!),
23, 24, 26, 27, 32, 36, 38;
Concept Check:
1, 2 (p96), 3 (p98,) (6, 7),
8 (p100), 9-11 (p103)
Review Questions:
1-5, 7, 8, 9-12, (13), 17; 19, 20
Conceptual Exercises:
1, (2), 3, 8-11, (15-19); 22, 23, 24,
25, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33 ... 43, 44,
(53)
(All material here will receive at least a mention, and most of it a lot more; but we still have not talked about it.)
Concept Check:
1-4 (p117), 5 (p122), 6, 7 (p123)
[In the question #5 above: given what the intended answer obviously is,
what could you say is missing ?]
Review Questions:
5, 6, 7, (8)
Conceptual Exercises:
1-4; 7, 8, 9, 10;
15, 16, 17, (18 => 20),
22, 23;
(34-36: calculations are easy!)
There are many details in this Chapter that you do not have to memorize; what does matter is to understand the concept of energy, as something not possible to create or destroy, but only being converted from one type or form to another: "energy is conserved." For example, you need not know the names of a number of different forms of energy listed in 6.4; merely observe the possible ways that energy can be transformed, from one form to another. The other remark is that you only need to be aware of the quantitity of "power," as introduced in the very beginning of the section 6.7. (Note that everything here is really very basic; consider reading through it, for your information.)
Warning In a couple of questions, "energy" is used in a way that warrants (begs for!) a comment. At one place the book talks about "8 physical types" of energy, and at another it asks how one can "create thermal energy." (Both are marked below.) We will stick to the notion of energy being a general concept, rather unifying than broken up into 'categories'; when we do need to distinguish between the Kinetic (of motion) and Potential (ability to do some kind of work) energy, we will use the term 'type.' As for the specific behaviour of systems – and there can be many indeed, like falling rocks, springs, light, refridgirators, rockets ... – we may talk about different 'forms' of energy. But please do bear in mind that these are just various manifestations (or sometimes even just names!) of one rounded concept: energy, which is generally conserved, does get transformed and transferred around, between different 'forms' or bodies. Later on in this course, we will see how having introduced all these different 'forms of energy' does not really tell us much about the nature of the concept itself; they are quite safely best seen as a few new names. (And so you do not need to memorize them.) Clearly, no energy can be "created" (or destroyed, for that matter); this lies in the very heart of the whole concept.
Concept Check:
1 (p145), 2 (p146), (3–12, 15,16);
Review Questions
9, (10 : see the "Warning" above.)
(11, 12 : useful to think through),
(13,14), 15, 16, 17, 18, 19;
Conceptual Exercises
3, 4 (again: no energy is 'created' !), 17, 18;
23-29, (30); 33,34;
35,
(44,
47, 48)
Again, everything in this Chapter should be a part of one's general knowledge. Still, only listed sections relate to things we spent time on, and thus to the test. (But please, at some point, do read through the rest of this Chapter.)
Concept Check
1, (2) (p168), (3–12, 15,16);
Review Questions
2, (3); 4, 5, (7), 8, (9); (10-12);
Conceptual Exercises
(1,2), 4, (6), (7,8), (13); 18-20, (21), (22), (23)
When we observe the gravitational interaction between an apple and a book (with earth not being involved) – the presence of a person (with a mass hundreds of times larger!) would clearly be a dominant factor in their motion. The question does deal with this, by saying how we remove ourselves and observe ... the problem is that, given how much larger our mass is, it appears that we would have to go really, really far. Can you figure out how far ? Say, in order to have the gravitational influence of our mass on an apple (force) be about 1000 times smaller than the force between the apple and the book. Comment on your result. (Clearly, this is optional, not needed for the test.)