Re: Too taboo? Re: Structural failure of NY's WTC

["Michael N. Monce" <mnmon@CONNCOLL.EDU>]

On Tue, 18 Sep 2001, Glenn A. Carlson wrote:

> Can you describe your audience?  Pre-engineers or
> pre-meds?  Freshmen/Sophomores or Junior/Senior?  Did you introduce the
> exercise as one they will likely be called upon in the future to do as
> professionals?  Can you be more specific about the particular incident you
> discussed in class?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Glenn
        We are a small, and selective, liberal arts college. Thus, the
class is a mixture of pre-meds, chem, bio, and freshmen physics students.
No engineers.  The example was the Egypt Air crash in which there was some
questions raised in the press about how fast the plane descended. I
started from the initial data from radar, and also the flight
characteristics of the plane.  I prefaced the exercise with the statement
about how accidents are investigated, what role physics can take and that
the physics they now are learning can be valuable in such cases.

                  Mike Monce
                  Connecticut College