Fall 2008 PH 103

First Week
Congratulate Students on their admission to AU and especially for being admitted in the program of study of their 1st /2nd choice Course Instructor: Abdullah Sadiq; Office- First Floor, A Block; Phone- 402; email- asadiq@mail.au.edu.pk Assistants: Muzaffar Hussain and Aamer Minhas; Office- Ground Floor, A Block; Phone-310; 314 Course Outline: Check with Course Coordinator Two 2-hour Lectures One 2-hour Tutorial for discussing difficulties, Problem Solving Practice and Quizzes One Two Hours Lab The following is distribution of marks Homework problems (5%) Quizzes (10%) One 2-hours Lab (20%) Mid Term Exam (20% One Final Exam (45%) What is Physics? Physics is the study of nature from the very smallest to the very largest scale. Question 1.1: What are the smallest and largest objects that you have come across in your life? What is their size in terms of meters, centimeters or millimeters? What factors might limit their size? Watch MIT OCW 801- Mechanics, lecture one for a possible answer to the last question. What should students understand at the end of this course? 1. The physical principals underlying most technologies. In particular they should become reasonably familiar with; a) Newton Laws of Motion and their applications b) The underlying physics of Maxwell Equations of Electromagnetism 2. The physical basis of nature and natural phenomena, and 3. Feel comfortable with qualitative and quantitative reasoning

Lecture 1: Physical Quantities and their Measurement

Any physical property of an object that can be measured or quantified is known as physical quantity. Question 1.2: What are some of the physical quantities associated with you, the Sun and the sunrise? Length, Mass, Time, Velocity, Acceleration, Force, Momentum, Energy, Charge, Temperature, pressure, density and light intensity are examples of physical quantities,. Of these Length ( L ), Mass ( M ) and Time ( T ) are Basic Physical Quantities as most of the rest can be expressed in terms of these three quantities. Later on we will also encounter some other basic physical quantities such as charge, mole and temperature. By length we also mean width, breadth, height and distance between two pints, two objects or two places. Mass, however, needs to be distinguished from weight. Mass is the quantity of matter in an object, or its inertia to change, where as weight is the earths gravitational force acting on it. As some of the students pointed out, when we take an object in space its mass remains the same no matter where we take it, but its weight changes from place to place. We can tell the difference between the masses of two objects; say a ping pong and a lead ball, by weighing them, or through a simple, but perhaps not very comfortable, experiment. Kicking the ping pong ball we hardly feel any thing in our feet but kicking a lead ball of the same size can be uncomfortable. The former, because of its lesser mass or inertia, offers less resistance to being displaced while the letter has greater mass or inertia and is more difficult to be displaced. We get a sense of time through changes taking place all around us; the changing light as day and night follow each other, the growth and decay of things, the changing seasons , etc. Units and Standards When we have more than one object we can compare their lengths by placing them next to each other and measure the larger length in terms of the smaller one. We can do the same in the case of their masses or weights. Similarly in the case of time intervals between pairs of events we can measure the longer time interval in terms of the shorter one. We are free to choose our arm, the length of our foot or the distance between two notches on a stick or the size of any suitable small object as a unit of length;

the mass of any suitable small object as a unit of mass. Like wise most natural phenomenon repeat after some time; our heart beat, sun rise, the waxing and waning of moon and the changing seasons. In this case also a suitably chosen short time interval of a periodic phenomenon can be used to measure longer time intervals or time durations. For practical purposes, however, measurements of the same physical quantity made by different people at different places and times must agree with each other. For this purpose commonly agreed units of length, mass and time are used. In scientific work and in most countries these are meter for length, kilogram for mass and second for time. Originally meter was defined as one tenmillionth of the length of the earth's meridian along a quadrant (one fourth the circumference of the earth), a kilogram was the mass of a cubic decimeter of water (a cube of side 10 cm) and the second was defined as the fraction 1/86 400 of the mean solar day. To meet the increasing precisions requirements of science and technology international standards of these quantities are now defined as follows. The meter is the length of the path traveled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second. The kilogram is the unit of mass; it is equal to the mass of the international prototype of the kilogram. The weight of C14 isotope of carbon atom, being defined as exactly 12 atomic mass units is now being adopted as standard of mass. The second is the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom. For more information, see Definitions of the SI base units and their Historical context Note, Units, Error and Accuracy: Always give the units of the physical quantity while mentioning its value; 2 m, 5 kg, 10 m/s etc. Giving number without units is meaningless. It is also important to give the error of an experimental error while measuring a quantity as the following activity should illustrate. Comparison of the values of two similar physics quantities with giving the error make it difficult to know which one of these is bigger or smaller. The smaller the difference in their values the more precise should be their measurements, or the smaller the error. Activity 1.1: As you might recall from the MIT OCW lecture 1 on mechanics, our height is somewhat more while we lie straight on a flat hard surface than that while we stand. In order to repeat that experiment measures your own height (with the help of some one) and check whether your error is small enough to observe this difference. The above assertion should in principal be true for any object, say a ruler or long spring. In the case of a ruler the difference might be too small to measure while

for a long soft enough spring it should be possible to measure it with reasonable accuracy. Question 1.3: Does the experiment with a spring suggest some possible explanation for the result of activity 1.1?

Dimension and Dimensional Analysis

The dimensions of a physical quantity are associated with combinations of mass, length, time, electric charge, and temperature, represented by symbols M, L, T, etc; each raised to rational powers. For example, Area ( A = L2 ), Volume ( V = L3 ), Velocity ( v = LT 1 ), Acceleration ( a = LT 2 ), Linear Mass Density ( = ML1 ), Surface Mass Density ( = M/ L2 ), Volume Mass Density ( = ML3 ), Linear Momentum ( p = mv = ML / T ), Force ( F = ma = MLT 2 ), Energy (
1 mv 2 = MLT 2 ) 2

Q1.4 Write an expression for; a) The potential energy and show that it has the same dimensions as that of the kinetic energy given above. c) The moment of a force and show that this quantity also has dimension of energy. d) The angular momentum and its dimensions Dimensional analysis is a conceptual tool often applied in physics, chemistry and engineering to understand physical situations involving a mix of different kinds of physical quantities. It is routinely used by physical scientists and engineers to check the plausibility of derived equations and computations. It is also used to form reasonable hypotheses about complex physical situations that can be tested by experiment or by more developed theories of the phenomena. As a simple example of this powerful tool lets consider find an expression for the time t it takes an object of mass m to fall through a height h . It is reasonable to assume that the larger the h the larger will be the value of t . Its value could also depend on m and the acceleration due to gravity g . Ignoring air resistance, we may, therfore write;
t h m g

Or, in terms of the corresponding dimensions of these quantity,

T L M LT 2

, or

L M L T 2 = L + M T 2

Equating the powers of L, M and T on both sides of the above equation we get;
+ = 0 , or
=0
2 = 1, or

=
= 1 / 2

Therefore
= 1/ 2

Thus according to the above dimensional analysis argument the time of free fall, t , through a height h , in the absence of air resistance is independent of the mass m of the body, as Galileo Galilee had argued some four hundred years ago. It is given by,
t h =C g h g

Here C is a dimensionless constant. Its value can be calculated either through a more detailed analysis that we will do next week or by experiment. Q1.5: Using dimensional analyses find an expression for the velocity object after its free fall through a height h .

v of an

Activity 1.1: Using stop watch on your mobile measure the time t of free fall of an object through various heights h . Plot t 2 as a function of h and using the value of g = 9.8m / s 2 calculate the value of C .

Note.1) Different physics quantities may have the same dimensional expression 2) Usually density means mass density. Later on we shall also discuss corresponding expression for charge density. Home Work: Attempt the following problems at the end chapter 1; 5, 7, 10, 13-16, 19, 20, 23, 25, 26, 29, 37, 43, 45, 57