Help   |   Contact Us

 

Readings

Singing Logarithms and Physical Constants

Calculating logarithms using musical intervals (PDF)

Constants for back-of-the-envelope calculations (PDF)

Required Text

The course readings were taken from a manuscript for the course notes. The manuscript is available as one file or broken up into its four major parts. Chapter 3 in Part 1 is unavailable.

Entire book (PDF - 1.2 MB)

PARTS TOPICS
  Preview (PDF)
1 Divide and conquer (PDF)
2 Symmetry and invariance (PDF)
3 Discarding information (PDF)
4 Backmatter (PDF)

Readings by Session

Readings given in the table below were designed to be read after that session's discussion and are taken from the manuscript above.

SES # READINGS

Introduction:
1 Preview (PDF)

Managing complexity (PDF)

Pit spacing (PDF)

Managing complexity:
Heterogeneous hierarchies:
2 Tree representations (PDF)

Oil imports (PDF)
3 Gold or bills? (PDF)
4 Random walks (PDF)

Random walks for accuracy (PDF)
5 UNIX (PDF)

Removing spurious complexity:
Proportional reasoning:
6 Triangle bisection (PDF)
7 Pentagonal heat flow (PDF)

Introduction plus spring mass period (PDF)

Mountain heights (PDF)
8 Animal jump heights (PDF)

Calculus (maximizing a quadratic) (PDF)

Jump heights (PDF)
9 Calculus (maximizing gain of a second-order system) (PDF)

Power limits to jumping (PDF)
10 Falling cones (PDF)

Calculus (maximizing a quadratic) (PDF)
11 Drag and jumping (PDF)
12-14 Cycling, swimming, flying (PDF)
Conservation/box models:
15 Conservation cube (PDF)
16 Flight (PDF)
17 Flight (scaling) (PDF)
18 Flight (explicit range and speed) (PDF)
Dimensions and afterword:
19 Algebraic symmetry (PDF)
20 Economics example; pyramid example (PDF)
21 Dimensionless groups (PDF)

Hydrogen size (PDF)
22 Densities (PDF)

Hydrogen size by physics (PDF)
23 Long-lasting learning 1 (PDF)
24-25 Bending of light (PDF)
26-29 Long-lasting learning 2 (PDF)

Buckingham Pi Theorem (PDF)

Discarding actual complexity:
Special cases:
30-31 Pyramid volume (PDF)

Pulley acceleration (PDF)
32-34 Drag! (PDF)
Discretization:
35-36 Random walks and keeping warm (PDF)
Spring models:
37-38 Waves (PDF)