Episode 129: Discharge of a capacitor. Students will have already seen that the discharge is not a steady process (episode 125), but it is useful to have graphical evidence before discussing the theory. You need to build up your students’ understanding of exponential processes, through experiments, and through graphical and algebraic approaches, all related to the underlying physical processes involved.
For the more mathematically able students, you may even be able to use calculus. This episode is a long one, and may spread over several teaching sessions. A spreadsheet is included as part of the student questions for activity 129-7. Summary Student experiment: Exponential dischargeThe suggestion to look for a pattern by measuring halving times is worth pursuing. Even though some specifications require the use of data logging for this, it is worth collecting data manually from a slow discharge and then getting the students to plot the graphs of current against time and voltage against time for the decay.
I = V / R (equation 1) List of Free Books. What Is Entropy? Entropy. A subject that comes back again and again and again and again and again in this blog. And so does the question in my inbox: "what exactly is entropy? " On the internet you can find a plethora of answers to this question. The quality of the answers ranges from 'plain nonsense' to 'almost right'. "the entropy of a physical system is the minimum number of bits you need to fully describe the detailed state of the system" So forget about statements like "entropy is disorder", "entropy measures randomness" and all vagaries about "teenage bedrooms getting messy" that inundate the internet.
Now the problem with the above information-theoretical statement is that in itself it does not make obvious why bit counts provide us with a meaningful definition of entropy. Reaching the current level of insight on what is entropy, didn't happen overnight. "The entropy of the universe tends to a maximum" The second law of thermodynamics was born. S = number of microscopic degrees of freedom S = log W. Eric W. Weisstein. Course Catalog. Faraday's Law - Lenz's Law. Lec 24 Current and Voltage references.
Electrical Engineering C245 - Lecture 1: Administrative Info. Modern Physics 2011. Mobile Computing with iPhone and Android. Modern Physics Lecture 16, Finite well and quantum tunneling. Lecture 11- Transmission Lines and E.M waves.