The following youtube video shows 5 metronomes which oscillate with random phases and which are uncoupled, since no energy or information flows from one to another, so they cannot "know" each other. The metronome needles are at same speed, but started one after the other.
Then someone lifts the metronomes (standing on a board) on a pair of cans. Now we have coupled the metronomes. The cans move a little bit What happens next is that there is a transfer of angular momentum between the cans and the needles. Hence the transfer of angular momentum is the damping force and this is an example of damped harmonic oscillation.
You might find this page at scholarpedia interesting.
Finally, I found something useful in my recent MST209 unit: A model to deduce how long it takes until a cup of tea is cool enough to be drinkable. As I always have a cup of tea on my desk when I am learning this is a very important question for me, especially because my husband makes jokes about my "ice tea", because I always wait too long before I start to drink.
But now I know that the rate of change of temperature is proportional to the temperature difference.
For the TMA in MST209 I only need to do some Mathcad printouts and writing the TMA itself.
Yesterday, I tried to look up my results on StudentHome. Well, I assume that a lot of other students had the same idea as I, because the website was not available.
But today, the results were available. The CMA consisted of 12 questions, and unluckily I had 3 wrong and so my result was 75%. I am quite disappointed, because if I had invested more time for those three questions I could have gained 100%.
But I still have to do one TMA for MST209 and the one for M337.
The course MST209 has a lot assignments: 7 TMAs (whereas TMA 1 was splitt into 2 parts) and 2 CMAs. Compared to the M208 last year which is also a 60 points maths course on level2 this is a lot of work, because one has to explain and interpret a lot. So instead of "show that", "proof that" the questions begin with "explain why" and "Describe". It is some kind of inaccurate. The further I go on with this course the less I like applied maths.
Well, CMA41 was the first CMA for this course and it is worth 3% of the assignment marks. It contained one question for each unit, so all in all 12 question, each with 8 options.
Well, I gained 77%, that is by far my worst TMA mark, but it is not as bad as I thought it would be, so I am pleased and I hope that I am able to receive a better mark in TMA3.
I have not yet received the TMA itself, I just saw the TMA mark on my StudentHome, so I am not able to analyse were my mistakes are.
