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):

Session 1 Free fall and 1D motion (start, move an stop) Session 2 Circular motion Session 3 Pendulum Session 4 Mechanical oscillations Session 5 Motion in real life: train, bicycle,...

Needed time to complete one session is 4 hours.