Real-World Problems

The purpose of real-world problems is to see how physics can be used to analyze problems that may be encountered in everyday life.  Students who author their own problems have an even better opportunity to make physics relevant to their lives.

Criteria for a good real-world problem suitable for an exam:

• Interesting and relevant to a typical student in this class; not just another "plug-and-chug" textbook-like problem with a trivial result that makes you say "who cares?"  The statement of the problem should be phrased in such a way that the solution has purpose and meaning.
• Requires ability to apply one or more physics concepts appropriate for the relevant exam.  The ideal problem is one that combines physics principles from each of the chapters covered by the exam.
• Requires assumptions, estimations, or includes additional information that is not required to solve the problem.
• Challenging yet short enough so that a well-prepared student can write a complete solution (using GOAL) in about an hour.
• The submission of an original real-world problem must be accompanied by a complete solution that clearly identifies the assumptions and estimations that must be made.  The problem and solution must be clearly written (free of spellling and grammatical errors and preferably using the GOAL protocol), and the values used in the problem must be physically plausible (e.g. no cars going 500+ mi/hr)