News

• Exam and solutions online: final.pdf, fsol.pdf.

• 12/14: Final grade is online. Thanks for the enjoyable semester!

Textbook

Grading

• A: t≥=80.
• B: 65.≤t< 80.
• C: 50.≤t< 65.
• D: 35.≤=t< 50.
• F: t< 35.

Conventional Method

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)

Alternative Method

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

Other office hours are online, the night before class: Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday at 9:30 pm. The subject of the online office hours is usually the JiTT questions, the answers to which are due by 8:00 AM the following morning. The "office hours" are in the chat room available for this course at learn.ou.edu, (use the password given to you by OU).

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

• 9/24: Quiz #1
• 10/22: Quiz #2
• 11/19: Quiz #3
• 12/11: 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

• METR 3113 home page from: 2006 2005 2004. JiTTs, Problem sets and quizzes are relevant to year 2007.
• Knowledge Expectations for Undergrad Courses (we stray from this a bit)
• What is JiTT? Learn about "Just-in-Time Teaching".
• Conversion of Units from the Wikipedia.
• units of measure, conversion table
• Engineering Conversion Factors
• dimensional analysis some elementary aspects of dimensional analysis.
• cleonis.nl A site with excellent pedagogy about the Coriolis effect.

• 12/08: I just noticed this in my inbox: Fall_Finals_week_bad_weather.pdf. I live close to the NWC. I will be offering a final exam to all those who are willing and able to travel to the NWC for the scheduled exam of 8am Tuesday. But if the University is closed, do not attempt to take the exam at the scheduled exam time if you feel your travel would be unsafe. An alternative exam will be offered at a later time.

• 12/08: Any postponement of the final exam can only be done at at the top levels of the University. I have been told you will see an announcement at http://www.ou.edu, if any postponement occurs. If I see an announcement there, I will also mirror an announcement here, but your best source for information will be the OU home page.

• 12/02: More about the songfest this coming Wednesday and Friday: 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. Some of you already mentioned your preferences for performance day, but please state your preference via email, to avoid any mistakes on my part.

• 11/29: On Friday and Monday I will be doing live the Top Ten (Fifteen?) Derivation Countdown. Next Wednesday and Friday we will have our dynamics songfest. Please schedule your songfest day with me.

• 11/27: A few practice problems about the thermal wind Practice Problems for Thermal Wind Questions.

• 11/25: We will be studying the themal wind on 11/26 and 11/28. Here are some links that might be useful:
  • Definition of: hypsometric equation, thermal wind equation, thermal wind.
  • Geopotential, Hypsometric Equation, and Thermal Wind
  • Veering and backing wind defined .
  • Optional pdf document: Thermal Wind by John Marshall, Alan Plumb and Lodovica Illari.
  • And another: Thermal wind by Robert Fovell.

• 11/21: Quiz #3 results are now online. Quiz 3 and Quiz 3 Solutions are now available for download.

• 11/14: Alternate Quiz 3 is available for your perusal. (I'll say it again: Monday's quiz will not be identical).

• 11/13: Tomorrow, Wednesday 11/14, an Alternate Quiz #3 will be offered during our normal lecture time. There will be no choice amongst the questions. If you turn your answers in, then your Quiz #3 grade will be based on your score on this Alternate Quiz: you will not be eligible to take the quiz on Monday. All students are welcome to attempt the Alternate Quiz and punt if need be (i.e. take your answers and quiz with you). The Alternate Quiz #3 questions will be available online for everbody, by Wednesday noon. I am astonished how many times I need to repeat this: the questions for Quiz #3 on Monday will be distinct from those in the Alternate Quiz #3, any overlap will be coincidental. Typo fixed in problem 19 inPractice Problems for Quiz 3.

• 11/09: Generation of relative vorticity by stretching planetary vorticity -OR - contraction of rings of air into a cyclone: animation of infrared satellite images. As promised, you will get your money's worth in this course: another edition of Practice Problems for Quiz 3 is now available. There are now 24 problems. Please send me requests for Practice Problems for which you would like to see a solution presented in class next week.

• 11/06: Here is a provisional list of the 4 topics for Quiz 3 on Monday, 11/19. As on the last quiz, you will likely have a choice of questions within each topic:
  1. PGF and the slopes of pressure surfaces; the f-plane approximation and conservation of angular momentum on the f-plane
  2. tidal force
  3. gradient wind
  4. continuity eqaution, venturi tube; continuum analysis of of simple 2-d flows (divergence, vorticity, pressure).
  Yet another edition of the Practice Problems for Quiz 3 is now available. There are now 20 problems. Note that problem 14 (about the thermal wind) is now marked as postponed.

• 11/05: If anybody needs to take Quiz 3 early, for example on Wednesday November 14, please let your request be known to me. If an early quiz is offered, there will be no choice in the selection of questions and it will likely be harder than the standard Quiz 3, which will occur as planned on November 19.

• 11/05: From Wikipedia: Coanda Effect, Magnus Effect

• 11/03: Best of YouTube: Secondary Flow

• 10/31: From the wikipedia: Canon.

• 10/30: Practice Problems for Quiz 3 now has a problem 16, which should be "doable" by you at this time.

• 10/27: Practice Problems for Quiz 3. Problems 1 thru 8 should be "attemptable" by you at this point in time.

• 10/25: 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?. The basics: Ocean Tides. Don't miss this! Tides in measurements of atmospheric surface pressure: Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog.

• 10/24: From the wikipedia: Tidal Force.

• 10/22: Quiz 2 and Quiz 2 Solutions are now available for download.

• 10/19: For laughs:cockroach physics.

• 10/18: Updated with new problems 16, 17 and 18: Practice Problems for Quiz 2. The Quiz Monday will cover:
  1. Pressure
  2. Buoyancy
  3. Dynamics in Cartesian and polar coordinates
  4. Accelerating reference frames, the Coriolis force, the Centrifugal force

• 10/13: Updated with a few more problems: Practice Problems for Quiz 2.

• 10/12: Bad Coriolis is a good read.

• 10/2: For an online lecture showing the classical pictorial presentation of the dynamics of circular motion, visit Physclips and click on circular motion. Provides some beneficial multicultural stimulation!

• 10/1: JiTT 10_03_a had to be revised. Have another try if the current version is not the version you attempted.

• 9/30: Practice Problems for Quiz 2. Also, from 2006: q2.pdf and q2sol.pdf.

• 9/28: Reading for Monday: The simplest (and maybe all you need): Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE). The local effort: Capabilities of Thermodynamic and Kinematic Severe Weather Parameters. And from the wikipedia: Convective available potential energy. And now that you have the basics, here is a recent application of CAPE: The Greensburg Tornado Environment on 4 May 2007 . From youtube: Cloud Time lapse.

• 9/26:Buoyancy, from the wikipedia.

• 9/25: Quiz #1 grades are now online. Solutions: q1sol.pdf. Quiz: q1.pdf.

• 9/24: Pascal has left us a legacy greater than just lending his name to the S.I. pressure unit. Here is what he had to say about the human condition.

• 9/23: Late-breaking typo refix in: prac1.pdf. (Clear your cache to ensure you grab the latest.) Or cross-out both m in (13) of your previous copy.

  In tomorrow's quiz, you will have choice somewhat similar to the 2006 quiz #1. For 2007, there is 1 required question for dimensional analysis, and a choice of 1 of 2 questions in vectors, equation of motion, and Newtonian physics. Thus, you answer 4 out of 7 questions, subject to above constraint of one per category.

• 9/21: If you are interested: Some elementary facts about drag coefficients. Also, the drag coefficient for a sphere of 0.1 is about the lowest possible, with just the right sort of turbulent boundary layers: Drag of Blunt and Streamlined Bodies. If we had used a drag coefficient of .4, the recalculated α would be much closer to what we used earlier for α.

• 9/19: Stand and Deliver

• 9/18: Reading from the wikipedia for 9/19 lecture: Pressure. Kinetic theory of pressure.

• 9/17: Now amended: prac1.pdf, Practice Problems For Quiz #1. Equation (13) had a typo fixed, and one more problem has been added. Quiz #1 on Monday September 24 will include material up through today's lecture.

• 9/12: I suggest you read Newton and Enlightened Science. Links for the basic astronomy that was in today's lecture:
  • May Earth be Revolving around the Sun? About the distance to the sun, and the size of the sun.
  • The Eratosthenes Project About measuring the size of Earth
  • Lunar Parallax and Hipparchus, parallax with an eclipse The distance to the moon.

• 9/11: Some reading for you in the Wikipedia: Centripetal force.

• 9/9: Save your ink and paper! All lecture summaries are now uploaded with 4 slides per page. Let me know if that format is better for you.

• 9/8: Some weekend reading: Newtons's Laws of Motion from the Wikipedia. If my comments about implicit assumptions in trigonometry applied to triangles tweaked your interest, you may want to see Euclidean Geometry, or for a laugh brainwashing. I probably should have put these links up earlier:
  • Exponential Function (read up to "On the complex plane").
  • Trigonometric Functions (read up section tilted "...complex numbers").
  • The vector section in this UT Course on Classical Dynamics is 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).

• 9/4: Now available: prac1.pdf, Practice Problems For Quiz #1

• 9/1: JiTTs are now available for Wednesday, September 5

• 8/31: Contrary to what I said in class, there will be NO JiTTs due Monday, September 3!

• 8/27: This guy thinks like I do about vector pedagogy: Re: teaching vectors

• 8/23: Some of you wanted another reference for dimensional analysis. Here is a 57 page document from MIT.

• 8/22: JiTT 08_24_a and 08_24_b had some typos earlier this evening. Should be fixed now. Thanks to those who informed me.

• 8/21: I will need a volunteer to present the correct answer to 08_22_b tomorrow in class. Check after 8 am to be sure you have the correct answer. In the case of multiple volunteers, the volunteer with the last digit in the 4+4 closest to the last digit in the date (i.e. 22) will be chosen. If that method produces a tie, the second to last digits will be compared. (Digits are ranked cyclically ... 9 is 1 away from 0).

• 8/20: Class begins today. Lectures are MWF 10:00 to 10:50 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_22_a and 08_22_b by 8 am Wednesday morning. Your personal and class password will be distributed in class today. If you did not receive your passwords (or if you lost it, etc.) email me at bfiedler@ou.edu .

  Hopefully, you already are experts at: Conversion of Units.