Homework 4 is up.

Your big homework #4 is up, and you should try to skim through chapter 4 as you tackle this assignment... as well as keeping your lecture notes handy.

Visual podcast is up, as is the doc cam PDF for today.

Exam 1 is Wednesday.

Midterm exam 1 is Wednesday. Looks like it will cover Ch. 2-5. Lots of homework tonight and tomorrow night.

Interesting density figures for extraterrestrial planets

The article, "Extrasolar planets: Larger than they ought to be," in Nature this week has some interesting specs for these "hot Jupiter" planets recently discovered around nearby stars. Most of them could float in water!

This is helpful to glance at because we will be studying

1. density,
2. radiative heat transport and
3. gravitation with its tidal effects.

Homework is ready

Your homework assignment HW 3 is ready and will go active at lunchtime. In order to get ready:

1. Get some graph paper.
2. Prepare for a few brain burners!

Ahhhhhhh

What a sweet looking set of constituent forces. I think they might even be good enough for homework. Nice.

iTunes U alternate link

I worked out a new link for our iTunes U visual podcast area. It has the guitar icon on the Webcourses homepage. Post in Discussions to let me know how it works. I tried it out after lecture with a student, and she clicked right through.

iTunes U

Please post questions about using iTunes U in the "Getting into iTunes U" discussion area in Webcourses. I would like to hear your reports, successful or trouble. It is always tricky the first few times of the semester.

Doc cam PDF is up.

Today's doc cam work is up in the doc cam folder in Webcourses. However, iTunes U is currently rejecting me from adding today's podcasts. :( Hopefully they will get that squared away soon.

You can try the $5.99 eChapters.

If you want to obtain a regular or electronic version of the textbook from the publisher, you can click the eChapters link on the Webcourses home page. The eChapters are secure PDF, $5.99 each.

Syllabus is available.

Students coming to class for the first time today, the syllabus is available in Webcourses. It is a PDF that you can save onto your own computer and print out for yourself.

This PDF also corrects the typo we discovered this afternoon in the original handout. Good.