ANNOUNCEMENTS
MTH 255H - Winter 2004

3/12/04

The final will be on Thursday, 3/18, at 2 PM in Kidder 280.

• The final will be slightly less than twice as long as the midterm, and will cover material from the entire course.
• The old material is described below in the midterm announcement.
• The new material emphasizes Lessons 8-13 (surface integrals and applications) in the Study Guide, as well as the related material in Lesson 14.
• The relevant sections in the text are Chapters 19 and 20. Please bear in mind that the presentation in class differed somewhat from that in the text; we covered topics in class that are not in the text, and there is material in the text which we did not cover.
• If you are looking for extra problems to practice on, the Review Exercises and Check your Understanding questions at the end of each chapter are especially good.
• You may also wish to look at §16.4-§16.9, and §15.9 in Stewart, as well as the review section at the end of Chapter 16. There is also a nice review in §16.10.
• You may bring two 3×5 index cards (both sides) of handwritten notes, or the equivalent, as well as the handout containing the formulas for divergence and curl in spherical and cylindrical coordinates.
• Other rules are as announced below for the midterm.

3/3/04

You can run the software I used in today's demonstration yourself! All you need to do is click here, then follow the first link. Since it's written in Java, it *should* work on just about any computer (except the one in our classroom -- which I'm told mimics those in Milne...).

2/23/04

Formulas for gradient, curl, and divergence in rectangular, cylindrical, and spherical coordinates can be found here.

2/14/04

I have placed a copy of the book "Div, grad, curl, and all that" on reserve at the library. This book is an informal introduction to vector derivatives aimed at scientists and engineers, material which we will be talking about during the remainder of the course.

2/13/04

Strange but true: The 13th of the month is more likely to be a Friday than any other day of the week!

2/12/04

A PDF version of the transparency I showed today can be found here. This picture was drawn by Kerry Browne as part of his PhD thesis in Physics Education here at OSU, entitled Student Use of Visualization in Upper-Division Problem Solving.

2/9/04

Here are some online resources about planimeters:

• Planimeter 1
• Planimeter 2
• Planimeter 3
• Planimeter 4

2/2/04

The midterm will be Friday 2/6 in class.

• The primary focus of the midterm is Lessons 5-7 (line integrals) in the Study Guide, which however incorporates material from the previous lessons; everything in the first 7 lessons is fair game.
• The relevant sections in the text (MHG) are Chapters 17 and 18. Please bear in mind that the presentation in class differed somewhat from that in the text; we covered topics in class that are not in the text, and there is material in the text which we did not cover.
• You may also wish to look at §13.1-§13.4, §14.6, and §16.1-§16.3 in Stewart, as well as the review sections at the end of Chapters 13, 14, and 16.
• The exam is closed book, and calculators may not be used.
• You may bring a 3×5 index card (both sides) of handwritten notes;
• Please write your exams in pencil or black ink (blue ink is OK).
• Wednesday's class will be devoted to review. Come prepared to ask questions!

1/29/04

I will be late for my office hour next Monday, 2/2, due to a meeting; I hope to be back by 10:30.

1/25/04

You should look at §18.3 sometime this week for its discussion of conservative and nonconservative vector fields.

There will be a midterm next week (the first week of February), probably on Friday, primarily on line integrals.

1/19/04

The homework ground rules on the homework page have been slightly expanded to address joint work.

1/14/04

I forgot to mention in class that tomorrow's lab will involve the notion of gradient, which you should have seen before. You may wish to review what you know about the gradient before class. You can certainly use the study guide to do this, although that lesson contains material we won't cover until Friday.

1/13/04

Those of you interested in a more advanced discussion of differentials, or who may be wondering about the stuff you see on the board from my class at 8, might want to take a look at the book:

Harley Flanders, Differential Forms with Applications to the Physical Sciences,
Academic Press, New York, 1963; Dover, New York, 1989.

which is on reserve in the library (for MTH 434), or available at low cost in the book store.

1/12/04

A new homework assignment has been posted, due Friday. The writeup from Thursday's lab will also be due Friday.

The differentials worksheet due today has been made optional, but please give it a try before Wednesday's class.

Suggested problems in the Study Guide are from Stewart; assigned homework is from McCallum et al.

1/11/04

Oops -- looks like the homework link was still broken; sorry about that. Should be working now, but under the circumstances I can hardly insist that it be turned in tomorrow. We'll discuss it further in class.

1/7/04

No class today, but there should be class tomorrow... The homework link has been fixed and should work now. We haven't covered differentials in class yet, but give that part of the homework assignment a try anyway. If you get stuck, give up until we've had a chance to talk about it Monday.

1/5/04

There will be no class this Friday, 1/9. My office hours on Thursday, 1/8, are also canceled.

A JAVA applet which illustrates the geometry of the dot product can be found here.

I couldn't get the "swap" button to work as claimed; try the space bar instead.

1/4/04

A rough correspondence between lessons in the Study Guide and sections in the text can be found here.

1/3/04

You are encouraged to browse the website of the closely related Vector Calculus Bridge Project.

You may also be interested in the website for the regular section of the course (which I am not teaching).

1/2/04

My standard grading scheme is outlined here. I reserve the right to make small changes to these rules.

Please read the guidelines on the homework page, which also apply to the writeups for the group activities.

11/15/03

A rough schedule for MTH 255 can be found here. Please use this as a guide only.