Re: [Fhsst-physics] Getting optic.tex to fit!

[marcuirl]

Mark <address@hidden> writes:

Hey all,

> Firstly, thanks for spending so much time on getting it to
> work. Sorry about the delay in responding - been lazy because
> everyone's taken time off for Thanksgiving weekend (and given that
> we are forced to not go to work I am joining in ;).

No probs and lucky you. Some holidays (-;


> I found that the pstricks packages are quite fragile. I wasn't as
> dedicated as you and I just copied the order they are loaded in the
> pst-all package in the defines file without every finding the
> reasons behind any of the problems. If you change the order they
> aren't guaranteed to work. pst-all doesn't contain all the packages
> we use which probably means they aren't tested as well.

> I am not sure what the best thing to do about the package is - I don't
> think we can include our own
> version in the repository because of the licence it is released
> under. I haven't given this enough thought but am open to any
> suggestions.

Tell me about as I have explained off list I am having real problems
with it, but don't really have the time to really investigate it
fully! Possibly over Xmas.

> Most people can just comment optics out as you suggested but its not
> a satisfying solution. I got it working using your patch BTW.

This is true. I have recommitted main.tex to default to this. I should
have done that in the first case, but I am only now getting used to
the nuances of working with others in a CVS controlled project!

> About the chapter order - Marcu is totally right - the reason I put
> optics in at the end as we didn't have any content for a long time
> so I pushed the empty chapters to the end - it just made things look
> better :). The order I think we should go with is (but please tell
> me if you agree):
>
> - Units
> - Wave phenomonology
> - Sound waves etc.
> - Geometrical optics
> - Vectors (??)
> - Forces and so on in their current order.

This is my feeling as well, though the ordering of wave, sound and
geo. are interconnected so we need to carefully think about this!

> We still need stuff on :
> - sound waves
> - ultrasound
> - doppler shift
> - wave-particle duality etc.
> - properties of matter - hooke's law, elasticity, semi-conductors etc.

I'll take some of these as they come up and are relevant to the optics
section! If that is okay?

> The syllabus can be found at:

I can't read all that but the topic headings seem pretty close to what
we have already! But I don't see much on experimental examples. (I
skimmed it really really quickly (-; ) What is the state of
experimental equipment in your schools. I have optic (and a lot
others) example experiment that are very useful in demonstrating
items. I try and simplify to minimise school budgets but can someone
clarify the role of experiments in the physics course! For me it was
an integral part. Several mandatory experiments had to be done to pass
the course!

> I will give this much more thought this weekend to get something set
> in stone but we certainly must move optics much further forward and
> also the waves stuff.

Agree, this was some food for thought!

marcu
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