Honors for Physics 201

 

There are 3 options for earning the honors credit for Physics 201

1) Attend the Physics 207 honors lectures at 12:05 on Fridays in 2223 Chamberlin. If you have to miss more than one, you will have to do options 2) or 3). Attendance is all that is required of you. You are not required to do the 207 project.

2) Write a computer program to calculate the orbits of objects in the solar system. The program should prompt the user for the eccentricity and the semimajor axis (in AU). It should then draw a plot of the orbit as a function of time, and calculate the period of the motion. The gravitational influence of objects other than the sun can be neglected. The program can be written as a Java applet, a Mathematica program, a Matlab program, or a VPython program (recommended). VPython can be obtained free for use with nearly any computer operating system.

3) Read and write a report (4-5 pages) on "A Short History of Nearly Everything", by Bill Bryson.Your report should first give an overview of the book. Then I want you to address the following question. What, in your opinion, are the most important open scientific questions? Justify your answer with supporting evidence and arguments from the book.