Physics 107: Sound Physics

 

Class Materials

 

Aside from the text (listed above and available at the bookstore), you’ll want a notebook, paper, pencil, and a calculator.

 

Notebook:  You won’t need a ‘lab notebook’, but if you haven’t taken a math/science course in a while, you may not recall that things often get written up on the boards that you’ll want to jot down and not lose, for example, the workings of example problems like one’s you’ll be asked to do in your homework.  So I encourage you to dedicate a notebook or section of a binder to this class.

 

Calculator:  You will need a calculator to do the homework and the tests; it should have buttons for cos, sin, tan and their inverses (variously written arccos or cos‑1, etc.), ln, ex, log, and 10x.  If you’ve a smart phone, it probably has a good enough calculator app.  I caution you against getting too fancy a calculator; aside from spending more than you need, you’d be more apt to make mistakes with it.  Last I checked, the bookstore had TI-30Xa, 30X II, and 36X which would all work (the TI-BAII wouldn’t and the TI-83 would be overkill.)

 

Pencil:  I urge you to do your homework (and labs and exams) in pencil rather than pen.  You’re going to make mistakes, and if you’re using pen you’ll mark them out, which makes things messier and leaves less room for you to do the correct work, which makes you more apt to make another mistake, which you’d then mark out, which… a vicious cycle.