Key principles (always think about these)
- Conservation of energy
- this is the most important principle and should be thought about in nearly every task
- understanding the relations between:
- energy
- momentum
- pressure
- force
- acceleration
- velocity
- …
- => conceptual understanding of derivatives and integrals (slope / area under curve)
- Sanity checks:
- dimensional analysis: do the units match?
- limits: is the theory’s prediction reasonable when x is close to 0? when y is very large?
- are the theory’s assumptions really valid in the experiment? (e.g. small angles, …)
Advanced mechanics
- torques / angular momentum / angular velocity…
- conservation of momentum
- friction
- Lagrangian mechanics
- not required, but may appear in some more advanced solutions
Oscillators
- (damped) harmonic oscillator
- resonance / natural frequency
- remember: possible higher modes!
Wave mechanics
- node, antinode, pressure in space & time
- standing waves
- interference
- sound:
- Fourier transform
- resonance
Optics
- Snell’s law
- wave optics:
- diffraction
- see also Wave mechanics
Fluid dynamics
- laminar vs. turbulent flow
- Reynolds number
- which length? which velocity? (which parts of the system)
- energy losses
Thermodynamics
- ideal gas law
- processes
- heat transfer
- Fourier transform / FFT
- numerical methods
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