This collection accompanies the chapter Physical quantities, estimates, equilibrium with worked exercises, solved step by step, and problems to tackle independently. It starts from units of measurement, significant figures and Fermi estimates, and moves on to trigonometry, vectors and static equilibrium. The worked exercises show a complete method; the problems test what has been learned.
Exercises
- The leaking tap
- Area of a measured rectangle
- Dog or cat: the class survey
- How big is a small room, in litres
- Bananas to feed the Italian population
- A giant car park for all the world’s cars
- The halved lead cube
- The angle of the sun from the shadow
- The height of the Eiffel Tower
- Imola-Lugo route
- Block hanging from two ropes
- The gorilla pulls a crate
- Box with spring: equilibrium zone
- Ball between two parallel springs
- System with two masses and a pulley
- Square carousel
- Ladder leaning against a smooth wall
- Beam with two loads suspended from two ropes
- Fruit press
- Heart pressure
- A piece of wood in water with petrol
- Archimedes’ principle on a human being in air
- The column of air crushing our feet
- Siphon from the bottle
- Volume of a parallelepiped
- Elementary conversions
- True or false on vectors
- Hairs on a head
- Resultant of two forces
- Picture on two wires
- Derivation of Stevin’s law
- Adriatic Sea
- Iron cube in water
- Hammer and feather in a vacuum
- Ranking of relative uncertainties
- The digital scale
- How many hairs does a head have
- Kitchen rice, Fermi style
- Dimensional analysis of the pendulum
- Ranking of orders of magnitude
- Significant figures at the supermarket
- The mass of the atmosphere
- True or false (dimensional analysis)
- Linearising the pendulum
- Fundamental or derived
- Familiar orders of magnitude
- Conversion of compound units
- From significant figures to the number
- SI without the second
- Breaths in a lifetime