Syllabus

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Course Description

We will explore the Physics of motion. This is a surprisingly rich pursuit; in particular, the art of doing physics turns out to be choosing what to ignore. The physical world around us is overflowing with detail and complexity and to study one facet we often must ignore another. In this course we will discover the unreasonable effectiveness of Newton's approach to this art and the resulting insights into predicting how things move and why. In particular, we will develop a full quantitative description of motion and its relationship to momentum, force, and energy. You will become fluent at alternating between conceptual and quantitative forms of explanation, and polish your incisive, scientific thinking.