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Physics 131-01 Final Exam Notes
Final Exam: Tuesday, May 12, 2009: 9:00−11:15 AM, Kunkel 102
The final exam will be approximately twice as long as an hour exam. The questions will be on several letter-size pages and you will write all your solutions on those pages. It is important that you write your name and section number on each page. An equation sheet nearly identical to the one you have been using will be provided. Bring a cal- culator in good working order. You should plan to finish the exam in two hours and spend any extra time you are given going back over your work checking answers, being sure you included units, etc.
Topics Covered: There will be problems (some multi-part ones) from the following general areas (consult the syllabus for the specific sec- tions covered):
Kinematics in One and Two Dimensions Newton’s Laws - (Forces and Torques) Work, Energy, and Conservation of Energy Conservation of Linear Momentum, Collisions, and Center of Mass Rotational Motion and Conservation of Angular Momentum Gravity and Orbital Motion. Charge and Coulomb’s Law (Forces and Potential Energies)
Hints:
Problems on the exam may contain several parts, some of which may be qualitative and require a clearly written answer. Questions may ap- ply concepts from several chapters to a single problem. The questions will vary in difficultly and style and will not necessarily be all weight- ed equally.
Problems will typically focus on the underlying fundamental physics rather than obscure applications or complex mathematical manipula- tions. Do not attempt to memorize equations or specific examples. In- stead, be sure you understand the basic physical principles. Review the equation sheet carefully so that you know what the symbols mean and when each equation applies. All solutions must start from basic definitions or an equation from the equation sheet.
You can be sure that one or more questions will require you to recog- nize and work with certain quantities as vectors. You may be expected to take derivatives and integrals on the exam. No questions will be drawn specifically from the lab, but it may be helpful to think of what you learned in lab in answering some questions.
Start each problem with a general principle or equation. Then, if nu- merical values are needed, substitute them for the appropriate sym- bols. This shows that you know what the relevant physics is and what the symbols mean. However, you should avoid substituting the numer- ical values until the end. Most problems are best solved symbolically first.
You are encouraged to ask questions during the exam if anything in a question is not clear. If you are unable to obtain a result for some part of a problem and a subsequent part uses that result, use a symbol for the unknown result. (For example, write “where a (in m/s^2 ) is the ac- celeration from Part B.”)
