Thursday, July 2, 2015

LAC2015: Physics and Calculus with the TI nSpire

LAC2015:

Physics and Calculus with the TI nSpire

This year's Life After Calculus 2015 (LAC2015) focused on applications of Calculus to Physics. What's nice about these applications is that they serve as a brief introduction to Calculus III, IV and V!

Last year we did the same final project after the AP Exam using the TI-89. It was Hal's Swan Song! So, this year, we thought we'd use the nSpire, aka Castiel, so as to compare and contrast the two calculators. Can you guess what LAC2016 will be like? Yes, you guessed it! We'll redo this project one more time showcasing SAGE!

What follows is a series of ScreenCasts summarizing what we did. Each ScreenCast has the handout used in class as an attachment to the YouTube description.

LAC2015 (nSpire) 107 Day01 Power Series!

LAC2015 (nSpire) 107 Day02 Power Series!

LAC2015 (nSpire) 108 Day01 Hooke's Law!

LAC2015 (nSpire) 108 Day02 Hooke's Law!

LAC2015 (nSpire) 109 Day01 CIS(theta)!

LAC2015 (nSpire) 109 Day02 Friction!

We ran out of time. I wanted to do worksheet 106 using SlopeFields to solve Simultaneous DiffEqus modeling competing populations such as Predator-Prey. Worksheets 103-105 were about Ballistics with and without Air Resistance. Worksheets 101-102 were about 2D and 3D Vectors. For now, if you are curious, you can see how we did it last year.

We never got to 110 last year. This worksheet is interesting as it's got a lot of loose ends such as proving Kepler's Laws, finding Escape Velocity and dealing with the Rocket-Mass Problem all using DiffEqus. We'll try to get to these next year!

Have a great Summer 2015!

Well, that's all folks!

Sincerely,

A. Jorge Garcia