Many students found it nearly impossible to complete the problem-set I gave with the golf shot with air resistance (PDF). I will have to analyze the problem sets to find out why. This was the third problem I have given on a problem set that involved making a numerical integration spreadsheet, so it wasn't integration per se that was hard for them. On the other hand, this was definitely the most physically challenging of the numerical integration problems I have given. Once again, I learned that the fact that I could do the problem in 20 minutes in Microsoft (tm) Excel (tm) does not mean that the students will find it easy! And I don't want to denigrate the students, many of whom clearly put in long hours on that problem. This is a level of enthusiasm I want to harness in this class!
After the mid-term, I will back off to a problem involving the numerical integration of sine and cosine, which is a straight-up math problem, but nonetheless very instructive.
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