ESM1B: Multivariable Calculus, ODE
Fall 2009

Room: Lecture Hall Research III
Time: Mon 8:15 -- 9:30, Wed 9:45 -- 11:00
Instructor: Pavel Tumarkin
e-mail: p dot tumarkin at jacobs-university dot de
Office: Research I, 130 Phone: 200-3517
Office hours: Th 16:00 -- 17:00 and by appointment

Tutorial: Tuesday, 19:00, Lecture Hall Research III

Teaching Assistant: Behrang Forghani
e-mail: b dot forghani at jacobs-university dot de
Office: Research I, 116a
Office hours: tba

Final exam will take place on Saturday, December 12, at 10:00, at CNLH. Please use the following practice list together with homeworks and midterms to prepare.

Textbook: K.F. Riley, M.P. Hobson, and S.J. Bence, Mathematical Methods for Physics and Engineering, 3rd Edition

Course description: ESc Mathematics I B introduces multivariable calculus and ordinary differential equations, topics of particular importance to the physical sciences. Students of Physics, Computational Science, Geo/Astro with intended specialization area Astrophyics, or EECS with intended specialization in Electrical Engineering are strongly encouraged to take this course in their first semester. The course covers vector algebra (three-dimensional vectors, dot product, cross product), equations of lines, planes, and spheres, Euclidean distance, vector-valued functions, space curves, functions of several variables, partial derivatives, chain rule, gradient, directional derivative, extrema, Lagrange multipliers, double and triple integrals with applications, change of variables, vector fields, divergence, curl, cylindrical and spherical coordinates, line integrals, Green's theorem in the plane, surface and volume integrals, divergence theorem, Stokes' theorem, introduction to ordinary differential equations (direction field, the question of existence and uniqueness of solutions), separable and exact equations, integrating factors, and linear higher order ODEs with constant coefficients.

The corresponding parts of the textbook are the following:

Midterms: There will be two midterm exams scheduled (approx.) for Wed, October 7 and Mon, November 16

Homeworks: There will be weekly homework assignments. The assignments are due 14:00 Thursday of the next week. Please drop them in the relevant mailbox located in the entrance hall of Research I. Graded assignments will be distributed at the next tutorial.

Grading policy:

Grades will be computed according to the following rule (subject to minor changes):

Cutoff score: 95% 90% 85% 80% 75% 70% 65% 60% 55% 50% 45%
Grade: 1.0 1.33 1.66 2.0 2.33 2.66 3.0 3.33 3.66 4.0 4.33

Math Support Center: additional help is provided by Math Support Center