Physics 4C

Solutions for Test 2 (Thermo 1):

Solutions for Test 3 (Thermo 2):

Solutions for Test 4 (Waves 1):

Solutions for Test 5 (Waves 2):

Solutions for Test 6 (Optics):

Physics 4C

Here is a final from a previous term that you can use for practice. Your final will have fewer questions (5-6). Plan on having ~1h40min for the exam because I will allow time for printing at the start, and time for submitting at the end.

The last question is about the polarizing angle. I do not anticipate covering that this term.

Physics 4C

Here are a couple of practice test questions taken from material covered in Ch 35 & the first part of 36, mirrors and refracting surfaces.

Physics 4C

Here's a test from a previous term. You have seen the first problem before (last practice test), but problems 2-4 reflect material in Ch 17 and 18 that we covered since Test 4.

Physics 4C

Here's a some test questions from previous terms taken from material covered in Ch 16 & the first part of 18, standing waves on a string with fixed ends.

Physics 4C

Here's a some test questions from previous terms taken from material covered in Ch 21 & 22. I do realize that some of these questions take longer to complete. You might like to make a note of the values and conversions I gave on the front page. You might like to keep those handy for your test as well.

Physics 4C

Here's a some test questions, and parts of questions from previous terms. You might like to make a note of the values and conversions I gave on the front page. You might like to keep those handy for your test as well.

Physics 4C

Here's a test from a previous term. Obviously yours will be just one question posted on Canvas, and quite different. However, you can see the type of thing I have asked before, and the amount of detail I would put into a solution.

Physics 4C

Here are some links to things that were referred to in the lecture on Thursday, April 16th (Applications of Bernoulli's Principle).

All Classes

Welcome to the Spring term!

De Anza classes begin officially on Monday, April 13.

Because this term will be one week shorter, and yet the syllabus remains the same, I am posting some short videos up on this website under the dropdown menu above: Physics 4C > Lectures. You can look at them ahead of time to get some background and I will cover some short topics.

Physics 4A

Winter term: Some students were interested in what they could do during the break to prepare for 4B this coming term. Here's my advice.

Read chapters 13 and 15 of the textbook, and look over my lecture slides for those chapters:

and do the textbook problems I set there, if you haven't already.

After that, read chapter 23, which is about charge and electric fields. Work through some of the examples, especially ones that involve integrating over a charge distribution. Try to make sure you understand how that works. Think back to the integrals you did for center of mass and moment of interia and compare. This will help you hit the ground running in 4B.

If you have more time, look at chapter 24, Gauss's law for electric fields. Did you know there's also a Gauss's law for gravity? Try to guess how it should go (or look it up on Wikipedia), then see if you can recover Newton's universal law of gravitation, in the same way that you can recover Coulomb's law from Gauss's law for electric fields. In chapter 30 you will see there's a Gauss's law for magnetism also.

All Classes

Congratulations to Jim Peebles and to Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz for winning the 2019 Physics Nobel Prize!

The theme of this year's award is "contributions to our understanding of the evolution of the universe and Earth's place in the cosmos."

Prof Peebles's work is in theoretical cosmology. He predicted the temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation, which was soon after unexpectedly observed, providing evidence of the Big Bang theory for the early universe. He also studied the formation of galaxies in the wake of the Big Bang, which lead him to propose the existance of cold dark matter, and to re-introduce Einstein's foresaken cosmological constant, representing dark energy. Over the last 5 decades evidence from astronomy has bolstered the Standard Model of Cosmology, for which he is largely responsible.

Prof Mayor and Prof Queloz detected the first planet orbiting another star. The developed a technique and the associated equipment needed to detect extrasolar planets by means of observing Doppler shifts to the frequency spectrum of their light. Since their initial discovery, over 4,000 exoplanets have been found.