Physics 581 Part 1: Teaching Dynamics with Excel97

Click here for Physics 581 Part 2

Michael Fowler, UVa, Summer 1998.
Introduction
In contrast to the Galileo and Einstein course, the material presented here is designed to be
directly useful to a teacher or student in a more traditional high school or beginning university
physics course on mechanics. We still use some of the Galileo and Einstein material, but we
amplify many topics, and enrich the mix with some spreadsheets.
Really understanding Newton’s dynamics requires some appreciation of his greatest invention—
the calculus. This is where spreadsheets are invaluable. By constructing a spreadsheet to find
velocity as a function of time, taking differences of position at successive time intervals, and
going on to do the same thing for acceleration, the student (in my experience) builds up a clearer
idea of the meaning of derivative than that usually gained from formal mathematical
manipulations. It takes some time to construct these spreadsheets, but I give very detailed
instructions. This admittedly leads to the danger that the student will blindly build the
spreadsheet without really understanding it, but comprehension will dawn with enough exercises:
have the students plot different things, vary the speed dependence of the drag force, and,
especially, vary the parameters (including the number of rows) until the spreadsheet gives
nonsense, then try to understand why!
I have put the finished spreadsheets for some of the exercises on the web, so they can be
downloaded and explored.
Book:
In this course, we just give a sample of some of the uses of spreadsheets in physics. If you want
to see a wider range of more fascinating material, I strongly recommend purchasing
"Spreadsheet Physics" by Misner and Cooney (about $28, I think). I bought it in 1992, and have
used some of the ideas here, such as leapfrog integration, and the simple pendulum as a test of
Euler versus Leapfrog. One unfortunate feature of the book is that it’s never been updated, so it’s
set up for DOS-based Lotus 1-2-3, but the ideas are great. There was a template disk available,
but I didn’t get that, so I don’t know if that would still work with Excel.
Beginning Dynamics: One-Dimensional Motion
The first steps in dynamics are really understanding the concepts of velocity and acceleration,
and all physics teachers know this is unbelievably difficult! The aim of the first three lectures is
to understand velocity and acceleration in one-dimensional motion, with liberal quantitative use
of the video camera and the spreadsheet. We do this before introducing Newton’s Laws, but in
analyzing air resistance we assume that at constant terminal velocity the air resistance drag force
balances the weight, to find how drag force varies with velocity (for stacks of coffee filters).
1: How Fast Does a Falling Ball Fall?
In the first lecture, we consider objects falling vertically under gravity. This motion has been
studied since ancient times, and Aristotle tried to analyze the motion quantitatively. He was a
brilliant man, but he got this one wrong. The question is, why? Galileo did much better, but that
was almost two thousand years later. It’s worth pondering what Galileo did that Aristotle failed
to do. It’s certainly worth doing Galileo’s experiment, as described in this lecture.
2: Analyzing a Video of a Falling Ball using Excel.
We show how to measure the motion of a falling ball much more directly, using a video camera
and playing back frame by frame to track the ball. We then enter our findings into an Excel
spreadsheet to find the acceleration caused by gravity.
3: Real World Effects: Air Resistance.
The video technique lends itself very well to measuring air resistance effects. We drop small
stacks of coffee filters, and find that they almost immediately reach terminal velocity, and, we’re
able to figure out that the air resistance is proportional to the square of the speed. Including these
real world effects makes Aristotle’s point of view more understandable, too.
Moving Up To Two Dimensions: Projectiles, Planets and Newton’s Laws
The idea of velocity is not too difficult to understand in two dimensions—it’s represented by an
arrow, a vector—but acceleration is really hard! And, if you don’t thoroughly understand
acceleration in two dimensions, you don’t understand what Newton did—you don’t understand
dynamics. So this is very important.
4: First Ideas about Projectile Motion
The development of Galileo’s ideas on projectiles, and the dramatic connection of those
earthbound ideas with the motion of the moon and the earth itself by Isaac Newton, is covered in
my course on Galileo and Einstein—links 5, 6, 8, 9 below are to that course, links 7 and 10
supply additional material.
5: Vectors
6: Newton: from Projectiles to the Moon
7: Forces, Equilibrium, Frames of Reference and Newton's Laws
8: More on Newton's Laws
9: Momentum, Work and Energy
10:More on Potential Energy
Using Newton's Laws to Solve Real Problems
The motions of all particles from specks of dust to planets in orbit are given with extreme
accuracy by applying Newton’s Laws. If we know the forces a particle experiences, we can
immediately find its acceleration, that is, how its velocity changes in time, and from that we can
construct a map of its path through space. So in principle we know how to solve the equations of
motion. But there’s a catch—writing down what we’ve just said mathematically gives a second-
order differential equation for the particle’s position as a function of time, with (usually) a
position-dependent force, and the equation is usually going to be one we don’t know how to
solve mathematically! The good news is, though, that these equations can be solved numerically
(although that gets rapidly more cumbersome if we increase the number of moving particles).
And that’s where the spreadsheet comes in: at least for one particle problems, in almost all
situations an ordinary spreadsheet has enough power to plot trajectories. As we shall see later,
the method becomes unreliable for very rapidly changing potentials, but this, too, is worth
investigating, because it provides insight into how far numerical methods can be trusted, and
how they can be improved.
11. Calculus Treatment of Falling ball with Air Resistance
In this first "real world" lecture, we do not use spreadsheets, but solve two air resistance
problems (drag proportional to speed and speed squared) analytically. These solutions provide
useful benchmarks to check our numerical methods for accuracy and reliability. We can find, for
example, how the accuracy of our spreadsheet depends on the number of rows used.
12. Spreadsheet Treatment of Falling Ball with Air Resistance
This lecture gives extremely detailed instructions for constructing a spreadsheet solving the
problem of a falling ball with air resistance. The complete spreadsheet is available for
downloading below, but it is a valuable exercise to build it yourself! You will understand it much
better, and be able to adapt it for other problems.
Download Spreadsheet for Falling Ball with Linear Air Resistance
Download Spreadsheet for Falling Ball With Air Resistance Proportional to Velocity Squared
13. Spreadsheet Treatment of Projectiles with Air Resistance
This is a much more interesting problem, and one with practical applications. What is the
trajectory of a projectile when air resistance is not neglected? What angle of projection gives
maximum range, for example? This spreadsheet gives the answers!
Download Spreadsheet for Projectile Trajectory with Air Resistance
14. Spreadsheet Treatment of Simple Pendulum
This is not just a simple harmonic oscillator, but a pendulum with the string replaced by a rod,
constrained to rotate in a vertical plane, so it can swing "over the top". To solve this
mathematically takes elliptic functions, but this simple spreadsheet gives a very accurate account
of the motion. And, you could add air resistance as an exercise.
15. From the Simple Pendulum to Planetary Orbits
Starting with the Simple Pendulum spreadsheet, we adapt it to a two-dimensional simple
harmonic oscillator, then with minor changes to a spreadsheet for orbits under an inverse-square
potential. Both the two-dimensional simple harmonic oscillator and the inverse-square potential
have elliptic orbits, but we can see the important differences from these spreadsheets.
Spreadsheet for Planetary Orbits
16. More General Force Laws
It’s easy to adapt the planet spreadsheet to look at laws of force other than inverse square. We
discover that the orbits become much more complicated. A perfect circular orbit is always an
option, but it is unstable except for the inverse-square force! So the existence of the solar system
means that the gravitational attraction is inverse-square. You can explore how the force law
affects the orbits by downloading the spreadsheet below, but you will find that for attraction
much stronger than inverse square, the planet rapidly falls towards the sun, than moves so fast
that the numerical analysis becomes unreliable.
Spreadsheet for More General Force Laws