This week 10 people came into office hours on Wednesday. There was a general confusion on how to complete constant acceleration problems that involved angles. For example, question 4 of the homework provided some trouble for many of the students who came in for help. Many students did not understand how to break the velocity vector into vertical and horizontal components in order to complete the problem or forgot that the vertical and horizontal components could be treated completely separate from each other. By helping to break each problem into steps, the students were able to complete the problem on their own and understand how to apply the lessons we learned in the vector part of the course to kinematics.
On Thursday, only one person came in who was not from Professor Kuo's class. He needed help understanding how to proceed on a Lon Capa problem with 2 balls shot upward at different times with the same velocity and wanted to find the time when the 2 balls were at the same height. I advised the student to break the problem into 2 parts, one when only 1 ball was in the air to the moment the second one is shot, and one part when both balls are in the air. Using this advice, the student was able to find the time when the 2 balls reached the same height.
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