Mechanics & Wave Motion Final

Review Session: Friday, December 18 from 1-3 or so in Merrill 200 or 211.

Final exam: Saturday, December 19, 2-5 PM in Mead 115.

The review questions and past exams for the midterms apply equally well to the first two sets of topics on the final.  In addition, the makeup assignments on the MasteringPhysics website can be used as review – and will count as credit towards any points you may have missed on the problem sets.

Below are PDFs of past exams and suggested problems to prepare for the final.  Since we haven't done torque or angular momentum this semester, you should skip the first part of the Rolling Hoop problem and the last problem in 2008F; skip S-J problems in Chapter 11 and the second problem in Chapter 15; also skip the last problem in the 2007F exam. 

	Questions	Solutions
2009F exam
2009S exam
2008F exam
S-J review questions
2007F exam

Questions:

2009F Final

Answers:

2009F Final solutions

The final exam will consist of 5 or 6 questions, drawn from the topics we have covered this semester:

1. uniformly accelerated motion (1D and 2D).
2. Newton's laws, including friction, pulleys and centripetal acceleration.
3. conservation of energy, including the work-energy theorem and potential and kinetic energies.
4. conservation of momentum, including collisions.
5. rotation, including uniformly accelerated motion and energ.
6. simple harmonic motion, including resonance.
7. waves, including traveling and standing waves.

I expect to space the questions out throughout the material, so you should refresh your memory of topics from early in the semester. 

The final exam counts for slightly less than 25% of your grade.

You may bring 8 sides of crib notes of any kind to the exam, provided you prepare the notes yourself.  If you're uncertain of any mathematical formulas (such as trig identities or the quadratic formula), write them down. 

Bring a calculator.

I write them all myself, so it is extremely unlikely that you will have seen any of the problems on the test before.  Since you will be attempting a new, previously unseen problem, at some point you should stop going over past problems and get some sleep in order to have a fresh brain for the exam.