BACK-OF-THE-ENVELOPE PHYSICS

4.0 credits

The goal of this course is to develop critical thinking skills that are essential not only in class and research, but also in everyday life. Some of the questions we will explore in class are so-called Fermi problems, such as “How many piano tuners are there in Rochester, New York?” and “How many sand grains are there on the beaches of Lake Ontario?” These types of questions are also commonly asked in consulting job interviews. Course materials include, but are not limited to, Fermi problems, order-of-magnitude estimates in everyday life (i.e. budgets, energy, city planning, disaster mitigation), dimensional analysis, fluid dynamics, material properties, thermodynamics, waves.