Peer presentations

Your audience this time is your peers. You're to choose a topic that you ought to understand, a question you ought to be able to answer, and explain it all to the rest of the class. There will be quizzes on the subject matter, so that we can all see how much understanding was passed along. The level of sophistication is considerably higher than it was for the first assignment.

You may choose your own topic and clear it with me. The following topics are available, and are offered as examples. It's much better if you choose your own topic. Of course there will be only one person to a topic.

1. How much energy is absorbed by a car's shock absorbers during braking? Do the shock absorbers affect stopping distance?

2. I'm not very happy with the treatment of group velocity in most textbooks. See if you can do a better job of justifying the statement that group velocity is d-omega/dk.

3. Derive the altitude dependence of atmospheric pressure using mechanics considerations. You may assume constant temperature, although you ought to include some estimate of how much difference that makes. Show that your results agree with what you'd predict from purely thermodynamical considerations, if they do.

4. Almost too easy: explain rainbows, including double rainbows. If we lived underwater and there were an airshower (I guess fine bubbles rising?), could there be a reverse rainbow? I mean, would we see sunlight, or other white light, broken into its constituent colors?