In this activity, students apply the Stefan-Boltzmann equation and the principle of energy balance in steady state to find the steady state temperature of a black object in near-Earth orbit.

The attached powerpoint articulates the possible paths through the curriculum for new graduate students at OSU. Make sure to update this powerpoint yearly to reflect current course offerings and sequencing. It was partially, but not completely edited in fall 2022.

An introduction to the use of the Raising Calculus surfaces.

Students have to match their surface with the appropriate contour map.

This small group activity is designed to provide practice with the chain rule and to develop familiarity with polar coordinates. Students work in small groups to relate partial derivatives in rectangular and polar coordinates. The whole class wrap-up discussion emphasizes the importance of specifying what quantities are being held constant.

This small group activity introduces students to constrained optimization problems. Students work in small groups to optimize a simple function on a given region. The whole class wrap-up discussion emphasizes the importance of the boundary.

Students construct the volume element in cylindrical and spherical coordinates.

Students are asked to draw lines of constant \(u\) and \(v\) in a \(u,v\) coordinate system. Then, in the same coordinate system, students must draw lines of constant \(x\) and constant \(y\) when

\[x(u,v)=u \] and \[y(u,v)=\frac{1}{2}u+3v. \]

Students do calculations for time evolution for spin-1.

This brief lecture covers the basics of heat engines.

Students use prepared Sage code to predict the gradient from contour graphs of 2D scalar fields.

In this activity students use the known speed of earthquake waves to estimate the Young's modulus of the Earth's crust.

In this activity students combine energy conservation with the relationship between the de Broglie wavelength and momentum to find the wavelength of atoms that have been dropped a given distance.

In this small group activity, students work out the steady state temperature of an object absorbing and emitting blackbody radiation.

This small group activity has students reasoning about how the Planck distribution shifts when the temperature is doubled. This leads to a qualitative argument for the Stefan-Boltzmann law.