Physics 1905.003 Fall 2002
    Syllabus

    Dr. Peter Border, teaching

    Welcome!

    Welcome to Physics 1905.003! This course is about exploring how things move with the tools of computer animation and simulation. Making a believable animation requires a good understanding of motion, and flaws are very apparent. The human brain is very good at detecting unrealistic motion, so looking at motions in simulation should produce immediate feedback on how well the physics is understood.

    On the other hand, physically correct motion is a tremendous boon to lifelike animation. Puppeteers have known for centuries that making something move like a human makes people see it as a human being, even though it may have almost no resemblance to a human being when it is still. See, for example, Karl Sims virtual creatures. When stopped, they are just a series of boxes, but, moving, they make most excellent fish.

    The plan for this course is to teach the physics of motion concurrently with the technology needed to illustrate the motion. There are several technological tools available to us, of varying degrees of complexity. The final set of tools we wind up using will depend on how things go during the semester, and it is quite possible that not everyone will use all the tools (grading will not depend on which tools people use, but on how well they use it).

    Textbook

    The text for this course is Physics for Game Designers, by David Bourg. It is available at the University bookstore.

    You will be required to download various free programs through the semester. If there is need for it, the downloads can be supplied on CD for those without high-speed lines.

    Course Structure

    Physics 1905 has two parts- the lecture and the homework.

    Lectures

    Physics 1905.300 will meet on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from 3:30 to 4:30 in Physics 210. Generally, Tuesdays will be spent going over projects (you may be made to explain your project to the group!), and Thursdays will be more formal lectures. Lecture notes will be posted on the internet, but blackboard work done in class will not be.

    Websites, Chat Rooms, Bulletin Boards and Such

    There will be a course website, hosted the UMN WebCT. The URL will be

    The website will eventually contain links to

    • The syllabus you're reading now

    • Class news

    • Lecture notes- these will not contain any work done on the blackboard, so you really should come to class!

    • Links to any surveys, bulletin boards, chat room schedules, etc

    The website will be hosted by the University-wide WebCT server, so chat rooms, whiteboards, discussion lists, etc. are available.

    Office Hours

    The lecturer for this course is Dr. Peter Border, who can emailed at border@physics.umn.edu. More conventional addresses are: 

        Peter Border
    Room 257, Tate Lab of Physics
    612-624-1020

    My office hours will be on Wednesday mornings from 10:00- 11:00, or by appointment.

    Projects

    Final grades will depend on projects. Each week, a homework project will be assigned on Thursday. It will be due the next Tuesday, and you are quite likely to be called in front of the class to discuss your work. Some projects will take several weeks to finish. These projects should count more in the final grade, so each project will have a weight equal to the number of weekends between the assignment and the due date. Note that even if a project is not actually due on some Tuesday, you will still be required to give a progress report on that day, and “no progress” will not be a good answer.

    Many of the projects will be done in groups. Each person in the group will receive the same grade for a group project. If you feel that you are doing more than your fair share of the work in your group, see the instructor.

    Several of the assignments may seem rather vague, especially if you've taken physics courses before. The assignments are meant to open up frontiers to you, and to allow you to find physics in your everyday life, rather than imposing some abstract, meaningless exercise. Try to have fun with them- if something isn't specified in the problem statement, make it up!.



    Tentative Schedule

    This schedule will be subject to change!

    Week

    Dates

    Physics topic

    Tech

    Chapter

    1

    9/3,5

    Velocity and position

    SS


    2

    9/10,12

    Acceleration

    SS


    3

    9/17,19

    Forces 1- falling

    VP, SS


    4

    9/26,28

    Forces 2- contact forces

    VP, SS


    5

    10/1,3

    Forces 3- drag, kinetic friction, lift

    VP, SS


    6

    10/8,10

    Blender, animation, keyframes

    Blender


    7

    10/15,17

    Collisions 1- force pairs, impulse

    Blender


    8

    10/22,24

    Collisions 2- conserved stuff

    Blender


    9

    10/29,31

    Rotations 1- variables in 2D

    Blender

    10

    11/5,7

    Rotations 2- dynamics in 2D

    Blender


    11

    11/12,14

    Realtime programming

    Java


    12

    11/19,21

    Matrices

    Java


    13

    11/26

    3D Rotations

    Java


    14

    12/3,5

    Collisions with rotations

    Java


    15

    12/10,12

    Constrained motions

    Java


    August 28, 2002
    Pete Border