News

Textbook

Grading

1. 60%: 3 quiz scores, with the JiTT score replacing the lowest quiz score, if it is greater.
2. 35%: Final Exam
3. 5%: Extra Points: (Presenting JiTT Solutions, Stand and Deliver, Dynamics Carols)

Accessing Grades and Answering JiTT Questions

A summary of all the graded JiTT questions, with solutions. (usually updated within hours after the JiTT is graded)

Office Hours

Goal statement

Course Content

• Units, dimensional homogeneity and dimensional analysis.
• Vectors and rotational invariance. Vector products.
• Elementary functions and elementary differential equations.
• Newton's law of gravity.
• Newton's laws of motion.
• The equation of motion in one-dimension and its solution. Conservation of energy.
• Pressure. The pressure gradient force. The buoyancy force.
• The vector equation of motion. Coordinate systems, Cartesian and polar.
• Centripetal acceleration. Conservation of angular momentum. Cyclostrophic wind balance. Tornadoes.
• Inertial forces in accelerating reference frames.
• An equation of motion for meteorology. The Coriolis force.
• The tidal force.
• The gradient wind.
• Conservation of angular momentum with the Coriolis force.
• The thermal wind.
• An introduction to continuum mechanics. Simple forms of the continuity equation. More about pressure and buoyancy. Bernoulli equation.

Important Dates for Graded Items

• 9/25: Quiz #1
• 10/16: Quiz #2
• 11/20: Quiz #3
• 12/14: Final Exam, 8am-10am

Students are NOT required to work alone on the JiTT problems. It is not realistic to enforce that; only the honest people would suffer. So share the joy of your scientific and analytic inquiry with your peers! Obviously, quizzes and exams must be solely your own work, and they are proctored rather carefully. No calculators are allowed in quizzes or exams.

Physlets

Links to Lecture Summaries

Links to Problem Sets, Quizzes, Solutions, etc.

• 3113syl.pdf, the paper syllabus (redundant with this page)
• numval.pdf, useful numerical values and unit conversions
• prac1.pdf, Practice Problems For Quiz #1
• q1.pdf, Quiz #1
• q1sol.pdf, Quiz #1 Solutions
• prac2.pdf, Practice Problems For Quiz #2
• q2.pdf, Quiz #2
• q2sol.pdf, Quiz #2 Solutions
• prac3.pdf, Practice Problems For Quiz #3
• q3.pdf, Quiz #3
• q3sol.pdf, Quiz #3 Solutions
• final.pdf, final exam
• fsol.pdf, solutions to the final exam

Useful external links

• Year 2005 METR 3113 home page Problem sets and quizzes are relevant to year 2006.
• Year 2004 METR 3113 home page Problem sets and quizzes are relevant to year 2006.
• Knowledge Expectations for Undergrad Courses (we stray from this a bit)
• What is JiTT? Learn about "Just-in-Time Teaching".
• units of measure, conversion table
• Engineering Conversion Factors
• dimensional analysis some elementary aspects of dimensional analysis.

• 12/19: Solutions to the Final Exam: fsol.pdf

• 12/18 (early morning): Final Exam scores are online. You should be able to compute your letter grade from the numbers available to you. Your official letter grade should be posted by noon today.

• 12/10: The Final Exam is now written. It has one required 20 point problem, consisting of 10 sub-problems. Then there is choice in doing 6 of the following 9 ten-point problems. As requested, there is NO derivation of the Coriolis force anywhere on the exam. Remember, regardless of quiz scores at this point, you can still pass this course if you get 40 or more points of the 80 points possible on the Final Exam. The vast majority of the problems should look very familiar, but some are not worded or constructed exactly as you have seen them before.

• 12/9: A few solutions to practice problems for which none have been provided: pracsol.pdf.

• 12/6: Correction in 3 b: prac4.pdf.

• 12/4: Songfest starts Wednesday. First come, first serve - but groups with an instrument will have priority (so they don't have to lug it again on Friday). Submit a copy of lyrics with names of performers, after your show. Some advice for the Final Exam (more will come later): all previous Quizzes and all problems in previous Practice Problems, and all JiTTs will be fair game. Even some derivations that have been seen only in the lecture notes might appear on the Final Exam. As was the case with the quizzes, numerical computations (except those that are neat and tidy) will not be emphasized as much they were in the JiTTs.

• 12/3: Some practice problems for the final: prac4.pdf.

• 11/30: www.ou.edu says OU is closed on 12/01 "due to inclement weather conditions". Apparently somebody in authority does not realize that there is no such thing as "inclement weather", there are just different types of good weather. So you will be on your own to grab the lecture notes and study:
  Bernoulli's Principle
  Gap winds
  

• 11/28: For those of you still needing to earn either some or all of your 5 Extra Points, you are welcome to participate in the Annual 3113 Song Fest. This will be held in class on Wednesday, December 6 and Friday, December 8. Your song should be about atmospheric dynamics, but you are also welcome to interject your personal feelings or experiences about dynamics. You may sing solo or in groups...but the standards for excellence in groups is higher. For those of you needing some inspiration for the song fest, grab the sample:samplesong.pdf. To receive your credit, be prepared to submit a typed copy of your lyrics with the names of the performers also printed on it.

• 11/21: Quiz 3 grades are online. The grades were scaled by 40. For your holiday reading: The Overselling of Higher Education.

• 11/18: Quiz on Monday will have one required twenty point potpourri question, and then your choice of 2 of the remaining 4 10-point questions. Study JiTTs and practice problems...

• 11/13: Quiz on November 20 will cover:
  • Inertial forces in accelerating reference frames.
  • An equation of motion for meteorology. The Coriolis force.
  • The tidal force.
  • The gradient wind.
  • Conservation of angular momentum with the Coriolis force.
  • The thermal wind.

• 11/13: The lecture notes posted for today, 11_13.pdf, mainly contain material that will be presented on Wednesday Nov. 15. The thermal wind may produce direction shear, and thus be associated with warm or cold air advection. See Veering and backing wind defined .

• 11/12: prac3.pdf now has 13 problems, and is probably finalized.

• 11/10: The last 3 pages of the lecture notes for today are about the thermal wind, which was not covered in class. We will do that Monday. JiTT problem 11_13_b is about the thermal wind, and uses a thermal wind formula that is given in the JiTT. It is possible to do the 11_13_b JiTT without understanding the derivation of the formula.

  Optional pdf document: Thermal Wind by John Marshall, Alan Plumb and Lodovica Illari. And another: Thermal wind by Robert Fovell.

• 11/09: Potential Vorticity, from the Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences. But the accompanying figures are here. A bit advanced for the purposes of Metr 3113. Nevertheless, equation (3) is notable: I will explain why our "A" is a practical surrogate for g dΘ/dp. Note also the reference to "poor mans's potential vorticity" on page 3, that's what we are using.

• 11/06: prac3.pdf now has 12 problems, all of which you could attempt at this point in time.

• 11/06: The inertial oscillation is part of the theory for the Development and mechanisms of the nocturnal jet. Some of the dynamics in that paper could be understandable to you at this time.

• 11/06: Because of the mislabeling of JiTT 11_05_a and 11_05_b, those questions are reopened for submitting answers. (Yes, that does make it too easy).

• 11/01: prac3.pdf now has 10 problems, but you may want to wait for a few lectures before you attempt the last 3. In case you are interested, the wikipedia entry on: Tide.

• 11/01: An alternative grading policy is announced: if your score from your final exam is greater than the conventional calculation (35% final, 60% quiz ...), you will receive a final letter grade based entirely on your score from your final exam.

• 10/30: A few links about atmospheric tides: The lunar atmospheric tide is purely gravitational, and its magnitude is something we can estimate with minimal theory. The solar tide is driven more by heating, and as a consequence is larger than the lunar tide. But with the theoretical tools we have in 3113, we can not model it well. I offer the following for the curious: What if the Moon Didn't Exist?. prac3.pdf now has 7 problems.

• 10/25: prac3.pdf now has four problems, and at this point in time you should have the knowledge needed to solve those problems.

• 10/23: Bad Coriolis is a good read.

• 10/21: prac3.pdf now has one problem. You may want to attempt it before Monday's lecture.

• 10/19: From the wikipedia (though it may not be entirely comprehensible to you yet): Coriolis Effect and Centrifugal Forces. There was a typo in solution to 1(e) in Quiz 2 Solutions, now fixed.

• 10/18: Quiz 2 and Quiz 2 Solutions are now available for download.

• 10/17: Quiz 2 grades are online. The grades were scaled by 35, rather than 40.

• 10/15: The Quiz on Monday, October 16 will have one 20 pt required question, consisting of 10 short sub-questions. Then there is a choice of 1 of 2 "Buoyancy" questions and then 1 of 2 "Polar Coordinate" questions. (The "Buoyancy" and "Polar Coordinate" categories are interpreted quite broadly). Each choice is 10 pts total.

• 10/11: Lecture notes for Friday are now available.

• 10/9: prac2.pdf is probably now complete.

• 10/4: More practice problems are now included in prac2.pdf. (You may need to clear your cache so that your browser doesn't give you the old version.)

• 10/1: The Quiz on Monday, October 16 will cover:
  • Pressure. The pressure gradient force. The buoyancy force.
  • The vector equation of motion. Coordinate systems, Cartesian and polar.
  • Centripetal acceleration. Conservation of angular momentum. Cyclostrophic wind balance. Tornadoes.
  A growing list of practice problems will be found in prac2.pdf

• 9/26: Your Quiz #1 grades are online. Quiz #1 Solutions are available: q1sol.pdf

• 9/22: Keep those cards and letters coming in, folks! A typo has been discovered and corrected in the last page of 08_23.pdf: the units of Pa now contain s^-2. By the way, in order to be sure I am downloading and viewing the latest PDFs, in Firefox on Linux I need to go to Preferences>Privacy>Cache and clear the cache before I download again. To make sure you don't miss out on the latest documents, see Clear your cache.

• 9/22: Quiz on Monday. Blue Books for your answers will be provided. NO calculators, NO notes. Bring a pencil/pen. There will be 8 questions. You must answer the question about dimensions and units. Then answer 1 of 3 vector questions, 1 of 2 Equation of Motion questions, and 1 of 2 Basic Newtonian Physics questions, for a total of 4 questions answered.

• 9/21: A few more typos fixed in prac1.pdf. Also a message from SAC chair Kiel Ortega: Starting Monday, Sept. 25, 2006, the Help Desk will be offered on Mondays from 4-6 PM and Tuesdays from 12-2 PM in NWC 5700. Questions to kortega@rossby.metr.ou.edu.

• 9/20: Oops. Typo corrected in 1d of prac1.pdf. (Thanks to James Dryden).

• 9/19: Lecture notes for Wednesday, September 20 are available now. Also, prac1.pdf has been updated and is nearly finalized.

• 9/17: More practice problems are now available in prac1.pdf.

• 9/15: Struggling with the concept of angular momentum? One of these student-presentation videos might help: Conservation of Angular Momentum or Fun with Physics - Angular Momentum. Or watch what happens when the mass times centripetal acceleration becomes larger than what can be provided by muscle force: Merry-go-round of death. Here is more responsible way to use a merry-go-round: Playing with ball on merry-go-round. But the text is incorrect, what you are seeing is the effect of the sum of the Coriolis and centrifugal force. In the inertial frame the ball is moving in a straight line, just as does the massive object in the "Merry-go-round of death", after the muscle force is turned off.

• 9/11: There is now a drawboard available for use in conjunction with our chat room. Feel free to play with it outside of the formal chat hours.

• 9/9: More practice problems are now available in prac1.pdf.

• 9/8: On Monday, September 11 we begin our review of the fundamentals of dynamical meteorology: Newton's Laws of Motion and Newton's Law of Gravity. But of equal importance is the the scientific tradition inspired by Newton's success. Will you be a more successful meteorologist if you know more about the history of our scientific tradition? I think so. I suggest you read Newton and Enlightened Science.

• 9/4: For the coming week, you may want to read the Wikipedia entries on the Exponential Function and the Trigonometric Functions. Also, a Study Guide for Quiz 1 is now available. (note the link to prac1.pdf)

• 8/26: For the coming week, you may want to read the Wikipedia entry on Vectors, but beware it has a mixture of abstract and elementary material. I recently found the Vector section in this UT Course on Classical Dynamics to be similar to my own approach. Highly recommended. Also, you should review the concept of coordinate rotation, which is essential to a number of topics on this course. (It's a macromedia animation, right-click on the animation to see the option to turn off looping).

• 8/21: Class begins today. Lectures are MWF 9:00 to 9:50 in the new National Weather Center building, room 1350. (Northwest corner of the first floor). For Wednesday, you may want to read the first section of Dimensional Analysis. Be sure to answer the JiTT questions 08_23_a and 08_23_b by 8 am Wednesday morning. If you did not receive your class password (or if you lost it, etc.) email me at bfiedler@ou.edu .