Week 5, starting Monday 30th October
All work should be completed in the session for which it is set. Work carried over for marking in the following week will only receive half the credit. Note that the session ends at 5:30pm, and work should be marked by this time. Please get each exercise marked as you finish it.
This week you should complete the following tasks:
Many physical systems that we could model using an Excel spreadsheet involve differential equations, e.g. motion of a body under gravity. Therefore task 5 (derivatives) looks at how we can approximate a mathematical derivative of a continuous function by discrete quantities in cells of the spreadsheet. You examine two slightly different approximations for dy/dx.
In task 6 (projectile) we consider a two-dimensional problem of the motion of a particle the Earth's gravitational field. You may well have met a simple projectile problem before - this was most likely the "drag-free" case - and solved it analytically. In this simulation you model the more realistic case of a projectile subjected to a drag force proportional to its speed. The aim (sic) is to find, by computer simulation, the angle of firing to achieve maximum range.