Physique de la vie quotidienne / François Graner ; [préface par Hubert Curien]

This book of problems with solutions deals with the physics of everyday's life. By this one must understand the macroscopic physics of objects such as toys, gadgets, simple mechanical devices, etc, which we find around us at home. The level of needed school instruction is that of the fourth year of college in America, or two to three years after the high school diploma in Europe. The style oscillates between scientific games such as those examined in journals of the Scientific American type and some of the tripos' exams at Cambridge in the late 19th century or the competition exams to to admitted to “Grandes Ecoles" (mostly engineering schools) in France, and the examination called “agrégation" which one had to go through for teaching physics in lycées in the French academic system. Solutions are often of the type presented in the American Journal of Physics. But the difficulty of the proposed problems belongs to a different class. The statement of the thirty proposed problems is purely descriptive and in words, one purpose of the exercise in fact being to think about the appropriate notation to be introduced, about the type of preliminary questions that one should ask oneself before attacking the real problem, what are the common sense approximations to be envisaged and, finally, wherever possible, to set the problem in an appropriate mathematical form, and deduce some numerical estimates where required. So this is mostly about the modeling of a physical problem of mechanics, thermodynamics, electromagnetism or optics. We all know that this is the most difficult part of the story since the student rarely has to deal with this part. Usually we suggest a notation, give him a clue about approximations, and conceive the statement of a problem in the form of a logical succession of questions that should lead the average student to a large part of the solution. Here nothing of this sort is done. The author really proposes a general method, or guidelines, to attack such problems. His advices concern essentially the analysis of the given text, always rapidly estimate some numerical values, pay attention to physical units, discuss the accuracy and justify the approximations, select a thermodynamical approach (equation of balance) wherever feasible, clearly distinguish between heat and temperature, and in mechanics always deal first with the kinematics and then decide on whether a force approach or an energy one is most efficient ... (Zentralblatt)

Notes bibliogr. Index