Smartphone Pocket Lab: Experimental Classical Mechanics
About
In the MOOC "Smartphone Pocketlab", you do real physics experiments at home and you learn scientific description of movement : speed, acceleration, trajectory...
The needed equipment is a smartphone and a laptop. This is all.
The proposed experiments explore the concepts presented in the course 'Classical Mechanics' that is taught in all universities. They introduce participants to a scientific description of motion by doing themselves experiments at home (no lab required).
The experiments are organised in 5 sessions: the pendulum (S3) and the free fall (S1) with illustrations directly from Galileo and Newton, while the Session 2 (S2) deals with rotation and Session 4 (S4) with oscillations and vibrations.
In Session 5 (S5), you do your own experiment: you can study trajectory of a bicycle, of a train. As an example, we show you how to quantitatively study the trajectory, speed and acceleration of a tramway. New ideas welcomed.
Format
The course is structured in 10 weeks.
It is built in five sessions (one every two weeks):
Needed time to complete one session is 4 hours.