SUMMARY OF CURRENT CALCULUS MODULES

1. Potential Function and Flux-Driving Relationships (Howard Littman, Bernie Fleishman, Mike Trinkala)

Most of the content of this project is still under construction.

2. Graphics for Laplace's Equation and Heat Conduction (Bernie Fleishman)

A heat flow model using a solver for Laplace's equation has been developed along with a Java applet showing heat flow

3. Morse Potential and Taylor Series Expansions (Bernie Fleishman)

Current work focuses on a Taylor Theorem module, with text and graphics. A visual representation of the error incurred when approximating a function by Taylor polynomials is being constructed.

4. Electrostatic Potential and Field of Continuous Charge Distribution (Kongki Min)

Most of the content of this module has been created and it is now being put on web pages.

5. Gauss' Law (Kongki Min, Phil Casabella)

This module is still in the content building stage.

6. Moments and Centroids: From See-saws to Integrals (Joe Ecker and Sam Sham)

This module is nearly complete and can be viewed from the Links Homepage. Some additional work will be done using more applets and more interactive quiz features.

7. The Shuttle Launch (Joe Ecker)

Most of the content for this module has been created but no Java applets have been constructed. Work will continue during the coming summer.

8. Interatomic Potential (Phil Casabella)

Content has been created and class tested in Studio Physics. It will be put on web pages this summer.

9. The Racket-Ball Racket (Phil Casabella)

The physics of finding the "sweet spot" in a racket-ball racket is investigated using concepts of center of mass and moment of inertia. No web pages are yet available. This has been class tested in Studio Physics.

10. The Compound Bow (Phil Casabella)

This module investigates the force and displacement of a standard bow and a compound bow. Java applets are planned and most of the content has now been created. This was class tested in Studio Physics using CUPLE. Some video is planned for the web pages.

11. Chemical Equilibria and Calculus Principles (Curt Breneman)

This module concentrates chemical kinetics, activation energies of reactions, general chemical equilibria, acid-base equilibria and the van der Waals equation which governs changes in equilibria. This module can be found at http://links.math.rpi.edu/~warrej

12. Drag Forces on Objects (E. Johnson and H. Littman)

The flow around a sphere is analyzed and various application problem are presented.

Additional Modules currently being planned.

(a) From Sums to Integrals (Joe Ecker, Phil Casabella, Howard Littman)

This module will take the student through several applications where a certain quantity is naturally approximated by a finite sum and in the limit becomes a definite integral.

(b) Optimization (Joe Ecker and Ash Kapila from the Mathematical Methods Team)

Starting with the basic notion of a gradient of a function of several variables, the gradient ascent method for numerical optimization will be developed.

(c) Mathematics and Chemical Reactivity (Curt Breneman)

In this module, molecular electrostatic potential fields will be analyzed and shown graphically, and the user will be able to change the position of a cursor and see what energy of attractive or repulsive potential is present at any given point in a plane near a molecule. This section will also introduce multipolar representations of fields.

(d) Chemical Thermodynamics and Bond Energies (Curt Breneman)

The user determines how much heat is released or absorbed if a chemical reaction is performed. The starting material and product molecules will be drawn by the user, after which an energy decomposition of the molecules will be made. The expected heat of reaction will be reported, as well as the expected free energy of the reaction.