arXiv subjects

Jean-Marie Fischbach

Publications and source records attributed to Jean-Marie Fischbach.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2023

A course on Climate Change and Sustainable Building Design

We present an intermediate-level course on sustainable physics, which combines lectures and student projects. Sustainable physics concepts are progressively introduced through both a global and a specialized perspective: climate change and building design. The lectures and hands-on activities on both topics show how they share common concepts and provide complementary points of view. Climate change mitigation and adaptation are touched on via student group projects, where they are asked to tackle a specific question of their choosing via reviews of the literature, modeling or experiments.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2017

A study on kinetic friction: the Timoshenko oscillator

Friction is a complex phenomenon that is of paramount importance in everyday life. We present an easy-to-build and inexpensive experiment illustrating Coulomb's law of kinetic friction. The so-called friction, or Timoshenko, oscillator consists of a plate set into periodic motion through the competition between gravity and friction on its rotating supports. The period of such an oscillator gives a measurement of the coefficient of kinetic friction μ_k between the plate and the supports. Our prototype is mainly composed of a motor, LEGO blocks, and a low-cost microcontroller, but despite its simplicity the results obtained are in good agreement with values of μ_k found in the literature.

physics.ed-ph↗