Questions tagged [physical-sciences]

For questions about teaching and motivating students who are engaged in studying the physical sciences, namely biology, chemistry, and physics.

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19 votes
5 answers
2k views

Physical applications of higher terms of Taylor series

Depressingly many of the physical "applications" of Taylor series that I can find in textbooks and online are actually just applications of linear approximation, since they only take the constant and ...
Mike Shulman's user avatar
  • 6,320
14 votes
2 answers
1k views

What are some activities/projects I can assign to calculus students from bio/chem/physics majors to specifically motivate their interest?

(This question was proposed during the area51 phase.) It's common for chemistry/biology/physics majors to be required to take certain calculus courses. At my school, chem/bio students must take up ...
Brendan W. Sullivan's user avatar
9 votes
5 answers
2k views

Applications of Calculus 2 to Physics

I'm teaching a section of Calculus 2 (integration techniques, arc length, surface area, improper integrals, parametric & polar functions, sequences, and series ) next semester and would like to ...
user1576's user avatar
8 votes
4 answers
665 views

Elementary physics course for pure math student

Are there any mathematical departments which present the course "elementary physics" for pure math undergraduate students, separately? Is there a way to present this course with the most pure ...
Ali Taghavi's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
355 views

Designing a Good Question on Kinematics: Test and Develop

So I was asked in an interview to design two questions for UK Physics A Level students studying the suvat equations, that is, equations of motion with a constant acceleration. The first needs to '...
Henry Murray's user avatar