Dr. Michael Kesden is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics in the School of Natural Sciences & Mathematics at The University of Texas at Dallas.
Calculus based. Basic physics including a study of space and time, kinematics, forces, energy and momentum, conservation laws, rotational motion, torques, and harmonic oscillation. Two lectures per week.
PHYS 3312: Classical Mechanics
Newton's laws; collisions; two body problems and trajectories; Lagrangian formulation; rotational dynamics and the inertia tensor; rotating coordinate systems; gravitation.
PHYS 5V48: Galactic Astronomy and Dynamics
Galaxies are the basic building blocks of the observed universe and come in a wide variety of sizes, shapes, and colors. The smallest known galaxies, ultrafaint dwarf satellites of our own Milky Way, consist of only a few hundred stars, while giant elliptical galaxies of over a 100 trillion stars live at the centers of galaxy clusters. Understanding the structure and evolution of galaxies is one of the most important open problems in astrophysics today. In this course, we will learn about the observed properties of galaxies and how these properties relate to their physical structure. We will then examine how this structure can be used to constrain both the supermassive black holes that live in galactic centers and the dark-matter halos in which galaxies reside.