PHYS 110 — Mechanics

Mathematics & Science · 4 units · Semester 1 · Required core — everyone takes it

Overview

Mechanics is the study of how things move, and San Diego is the laboratory. Forces on a rail, pumping a transition, the bottom turn, lean angle through a corner — every law in this course is something your body already negotiates. At SDIT the lab is on the sand and in the water: you measure the world you actually live in, then meet the equations that were describing it all along.

Taught as How Things Move: the ocean and the board first, Newton second. A wave is a lecture on energy transport; a skateboard is an instrument for studying rotational inertia. No concept arrives as notation first — force is a bottom turn before it is a vector.

One day a week, about ten minutes a sitting, building toward real measurement, honest uncertainty, and a lab artifact you can defend.

The Two Registers

• Catalog register: Classical mechanics — kinematics, forces, energy, momentum, rotation; laboratory. Transfer-legible introductory mechanics.
• Teaching frame: How Things Move — the ocean and the board; lab on the sand and in the water.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course you can:

1. Apply Newton’s laws to analyze real one- and two-dimensional motion, including friction and circular motion. → Craft
2. Use conservation of energy and momentum to predict outcomes you can then check by measurement. → Judgment
3. Design a simple measurement, estimate its uncertainty, and say honestly what the data can and cannot support. → Judgment · Command of Intelligence
4. Keep a lab notebook that another student could reproduce your work from. → Articulation
5. Demonstrate the above unassisted, in periodic written examinations. → Command of Intelligence

Each outcome maps to the five institutional outcomes (Judgment, Command of Intelligence, Craft, Articulation, Breadth of Mind) — the assessment spine of the degree and its accreditation evidence file.

The Made Thing

A defended lab artifact: a measurement of something real — a wave, a ramp, a wheel, a fall — with the apparatus, the data, the uncertainty, and the physics presented as one piece of work.

How You’re Assessed

• Lab work and notebooks — measurement, uncertainty, and reproducibility are graded, not just answers.
• The lab artifact, presented and defended.
• Unassisted written examinations — the laws, applied with the tools closed.
• Everything lands in your portfolio, reviewed against the five outcomes at the end-of-year gate.

The Daily Path

One session per course day — each one built to look easy and pull you in: one thing to experience, one idea, one question to carry. The schedule below is generated from the course’s own day files.

Day 01 — The Wave Is a Lecture

Ten minutes. One woodblock print, one physicist with a flower, one question.

Begin Day 01 →

Day 02 — coming soon

Being written — publishes with Week 2. All five courses advance together, week by week.

Day 03 — coming soon

Being written — publishes with Week 3. All five courses advance together, week by week.

Day 04 — coming soon

Being written — publishes with Week 4. All five courses advance together, week by week.

Day 05 — coming soon

Being written — publishes with Week 5. All five courses advance together, week by week.

Day 06 — coming soon

Being written — publishes with Week 6. All five courses advance together, week by week.

Day 07 — coming soon

Being written — publishes with Week 7. All five courses advance together, week by week.

Day 08 — coming soon

Being written — publishes with Week 8. All five courses advance together, week by week.

Day 09 — coming soon

Being written — publishes with Week 9. All five courses advance together, week by week.

Day 10 — coming soon

Being written — publishes with Week 10. All five courses advance together, week by week.

Day 11 — coming soon

Being written — publishes with Week 11. All five courses advance together, week by week.

Day 12 — coming soon

Being written — publishes with Week 12. All five courses advance together, week by week.

Day 13 — coming soon

Being written — publishes with Week 13. All five courses advance together, week by week.

Day 14 — coming soon

Being written — publishes with Week 14. All five courses advance together, week by week.

Day 15 — coming soon

Being written — publishes with Week 15. All five courses advance together, week by week.

Every course here is built to one standard: it ends in a made thing you can show, and it ships day by day.