Audit of existing notebooks

[ixjlyons]

bicycle2dof

• topics:
  • multi degree of freedom systems
  • turning a system of second order equations of motion into first order in matrix form
  • the eigenvalue problem (in general)
  • phasors
  • mode shapes
  • odeint
  • stability
• needs a sketch of the system with steering and roll state variables
• needs explanation for the two different stiffness matrices
• I think this example would be good for teaching some of the topics listed above, whereas they are currently treated more like dependencies and this is just a real-world example for motivation
• the benchmark_parameters could benefit from being a class where you can set attributes rather than a function that returns a dict
• benchmark_par_to_canonical should probably be hidden
• the exercises at the end are good, including some exploration and design tasks

book_balancing

• topics:
  • non-linear dynamics
  • linearization
  • Lagrange method
  • odeint
• linearization exercise maybe should be testable in some way
• having them approximate the period of the nonlinear oscillations by looking for zero crossings is nice as a practical exercise
• the real demo up in front of the class went well I think
• the final question (derive the equations of motion) was frustrating to them and may not have been all that enlightening

bumpy_road

• topics:
  • base excitation
  • homogeneous and particular solution
  • damper design
  • force transmissibility
• needs a drawing (currently refers to book example)
• currently is a bunch of code and a couple design exercise prompts -- need to determine if/how much they should code
• needs significantly more text and equations

forced_vibrations_with_viscous_damping

• topics:
  • harmonic excitation (force)
  • homogeneous and particular solution
  • phasors
  • resonance
• this notebook is pretty well fleshed out
• the vector representation section could be the introduction to the topic rather than assuming it's a prereq -- a little phasor widget could be useful here
• there is a lot of plotting code here

nonlinear_vibrations

• topics:
  • 2nd-order equation of motion to system of first ODEs
  • nonlinear dynamics
  • Coulomb friction
  • pendulum
  • stability (inverted pendulum)
  • comparing linear vs. nonlinear free responses
• this was the first notebook introducing numerical ODE integration
• the intro material of this notebook could be good to just add to the top of the book balancing notebook, since that's a bit more interesting of an example

sawtooth_forcing

• topics
  • arbitrary periodic forcing
  • Fourier series
  • symbolic computation
• if used as standalone notebook on Fourier series and periodic forcing, needs more intro material
• when moving to numerical use of the Fourier coefficients, should we use subs on the sympy expressions?
• needs a real-world example
• the concept of using Fourier series coefficients to approximate a complicated forcing function and analytically evaluate the output seems somewhat antiquated -- it's fairly theoretical and I can't come up with a good real-world example

vibrating_building

• topics:
  • multi-dimensional systems (>2dof)
  • the eigenproblem
  • mode shapes
  • spring only
• needs a diagram/model
• assumes they've already seen the theoretical material -- needs more text and equations
• seems common for students to be lost by all of the matrix manipulations

viscous_damping

• topics:
  • linear damping
  • under/over/critical damping
• needs a mass-spring-damper diagram
• a motivational real-world example would be cool
• programming of the damping regimes was not great, e.g. hard to choose a c value to make zeta=1

[moorepants]

Closing this. We incorparted everything in some modified form. Thanks for laying this out in August.