5 ms·
Art of approximation in science and engineering
- agbell 17y agoThis looks to be a good resource for back of the envelope style estimations
- sp332 17y agoThere are whole fields of theory & practice where approximations are all that are used. http://www.wastedtalent.ca/index.php?view=341 http://www.wastedtalent.ca/index.php?view=341
- splat 17y agoAlso check out Caltech's Ph 101, Order of Magnitude Physics: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~oom/index.html http://www.its.caltech.edu/~oom/index.html The course notes aren't nearly as good, but the homework sets have some really fun problems.
- mhartl 17y agoThe similarity is no coincidence: Sanjoy Mahajan, the principal instructor of the MIT course, did his Ph.D. at Caltech under Sterl Phinney, the instructor for the course you linked. Moreover, half of Sanjoy's dissertation was an order-of-magnitude physics textbook based on Sterl's course (taught for many years with fellow astrophysicist Peter Goldreich, now a professor emeritus). (N.B. I taught Physics 1 with Sanjoy when we overlapped at Caltech, and Sterl was my Ph.D. advisor as well.)
- gcheong 17y agoHave the handouts been published together in book form yet?
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- dedalus 17y agoI read http://www.amazon.com/Guesstimation-Solving-Worlds-Problems-Cocktail/dp/0691129495/ref=pd_sim_b_7 http://www.amazon.com/Guesstimation-Solving-Worlds-Problems-... and the attached link delves into far greater theory than the book. Thank you for sharing this with us :-)