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#886 overall

Back-of-the-Envelope Physics

Stanford University

1 recommender · 1 thread · recommended in 1 year, 2020 · score 0.7

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A Stanford physics course built on estimation methods, teaching how to reason to order-of-magnitude answers to physical problems with rough approximations. It draws on Sanjoy Mahajan's approach to back-of-the-envelope reasoning.

One commenter calls it an excellent physics course, citing a first-day exercise estimating how much to feed a baby modeled as a spherical heat emitter.

Science & Engineeringintermediate#estimation#physics#order of magnitude#mahajan

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20062026

What commenters said (1)

  1. Recommendshardmath1232020in “Street-Fighting Mathematics”

    Stanford has an excellent physics course, "Back-of-the-Envelope Physics," based on Mahajan's work. On the first day we worked out how much to feed a baby every day assuming they are spherical heat emitters of radius 1 meter... (also, you got points off the problem sets if your answers were _too_ precise).

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