Re:How to Turn Physics into an Optimization Problem
by formalsystem on Tuesday November 05, 2019 @02:44PM
(#21455913)
That's really helpful, I'll think about how to reword this. We covered calculus physics in Lebanon which uses the French Baccalaureate program so was making some non global assumptions.
Re:How to Turn Physics into an Optimization Problem
by neoliberal_dad on Tuesday November 05, 2019 @04:09PM
(#21456730)
Speaking as someone who came from a less-than-stellar high school, referring to concepts as being "from high school X" can be pretty demoralizing to hear, and it's almost never necessary to mention. Consider using "introductory" instead, unless your audience is explicitly only people who went to advanced high schools.
Re:How to Turn Physics into an Optimization Problem
by madhadron on Tuesday November 05, 2019 @05:42PM
(#21457555)
I usually see is q for position, p for momentum, and a for acceleration. But that might be too much time in Landau and Lifshitz.
> But we know from high school physics that a = v' = p''
It would be exceedingly rare to see "p" used as the position variable in high school physics - it's almost exclusively reserved for momentum.
Most high school students do 1D physics with position as "x". Those who go on to study more physics usually use "s" as their displacement function/vector and maybe "r" as a position vector.
(Also, the overwhelming majority of high school physics students never touch calculus-based physics -- only about 50-60 thousand students take the AP Physics C exam each year. 5 times that take AP Physics 1, and even more take non-AP Physics.)