• You want to describe the instantaneous condition of the room around you for a scientific publication … call the magazine Good Laboratories and Gardens. Which of the following quantities would you describe with a vector (set of three numbers) and which quantities would you describe with a scalar (single number): the position of a fly sitting still on a table; the position of a bug flying thru the air; the temperature of the air; the pressure of the air; the wonderful smell wafting in from the cafeteria; the breeze in the room; the position of the blackboard (whiteboard); the orientation of the blackboard (whiteboard); the average intensity of the sound in the room; the color of the walls; the degree to which you like your workshop leader's hairstyle. Which of these things can you convey unambiguously in your paper?

• You've just had a big meal and you want to figure out if you have room left to eat a brownie. The brownie in question has been measured to be 2.3 cm x 4.622 cm x 4.544 cm. What is the volume of the brownie? What is your uncertainty in the volume, based on the measurements you are given?

• You are in a car at a stoplight (headed in the +x direction). When the light turns green you accelerate and then coast at constant velocity down the block until you see the stoplight in front of you has turned red. You decelerate constantly and come to a stop in front of the next light. Qualitatively, graph the car position (instantaneous) as a function of time, the car (instantaneous) velocity as a function of time, the car (instantaneous) velocity as a function of position, the car (instantaneous) acceleration as a function of time, the car (instantaneous) acceleration as a function of position. What is the average velocity? What is the average acceleration? What is the average position?

• A football player gets hit rather hard during a game. He isn't so steady when he first gets up. Initially he is hit in the center of the field. Assume the field is oriented with the endzones aligned along the north-south direction. When he first gets up, the player walks 10 yards south. Then he turns sharply and walks 5 yards at an angle of 20 degrees north of east. Then he walks 20 yards north and collapses. Where does the player end up relative to the place where he was hit initially?

• You are on the roof of the physics building, 46.0 m above the ground. Your physics professor, who is 1.8 m tall, is walking alongside the building at a constant speed of 1.20 m/s. If you wish to drop an egg on your professor's head, where should the professor be when you release the egg? Assume the egg is in free fall (i.e., you can ignore air resistance). (Actual experimentation is discouraged.)

If time, do:

• Consider a car sitting still at t=0. Define x=0 at the point where the car is sitting. Now the car accelerates according to a(t)=2t-1 m/s². What is the speed of the car after 10 seconds? What is the position of the car?

• What is your concept of time and space? Is there one big, universal spatial "reference frame" for the universe? Is time measured here is the same as that measured on Alpha Centauri is the same as that measured by Mario Andretti zipping by on a rocket ship???