Dr Paul Connolly - teaching materials for EART10160

Module EART10160 Scientific Problem Solving (incl. Data Analysis / Statistics)

Preamble Syllabus Appendices
Foundation Maths Support Pack Periodic Table University Podcast service Foundation Maths eBook (from library)

Learning Module 1: Problem Solving / Maths 1

Week 1: Measuring molecules
  • Understand how atoms are arranged in the periodic table / chemical bonding
  • Relative molecular weight, moles, Avogadro's number
  • Unit conversion, areas and volumes
  • Foundation maths: Indices / fractional indices (for those who require practise)
Week 2: The Greens we Eat
  • Applying relative molecular weights
  • Energy, power and heat
  • Unit conversion, areas and volumes
  • Foundation maths: factorisation and expanding brackets (for those who require practise)
Week 3: A Seam of Gold
  • Application of trig, Pythagoras' theorem
  • Areas and volumes of parallelograms and 3-d objects
  • Weight percent and ppm
  • Unit conversion, areas and volumes
  • Foundation maths: Trigonometry and Pythagoras (for those who require practise)
Week 4: Altering the Atmosphere by burning fossil fuels
  • Balancing chemical equations
  • More practise with moles and molecular weights
  • Heat, Energy and Power
  • Spherical Shell
  • Foundation maths: Transposing Formula (for those who require practise)
Week 5: Acid Mine Drainage
  • Balancing chemical equations
  • pH of a solution
  • Foundation maths: Exponentials and Logarithms and rearranging equations (for those who require practise)
Week 6:

Learning Module 2: Statistics / Data analysis 1

Some words on module 2 Notes for module 2
Click here to see a video of how to install GNU Octave (free version of MATLAB)
Week 7: Descriptive Stats and Outliers
  • Summarise time-series data, central tendency and spread
  • Summarise data graphically using Excel / Matlab
Week 8: The Normal Distribution and Central Limit Theorem
  • Understand the normal distribution
  • Probability density and cumulative probability
  • Central Limit Theorem
Week 9: Hypothesis Testing about a proportion or a mean
  • Test the hypothesis that a proportion is significantly different to a prescribed value
  • Test the hypothesis that a mean is significantly different to a prescribed value
Week 10: Hypothesis Testing about two proportions / means
  • Test the hypothesis that two groups are different
Week 11: Correlation, regression and error propagation
  • Curve fitting and correlation
  • Significance of correlation coefficient
  • Error propagation

Just for fun: notes on a shallow water model in MATLAB able to simulate various atmospheric phenomena.

Please note, I will update the slides as I go along with findings from my research.

Useful links

Manchester Ice Cloud Chamber Our cloud chamber for conducting research into cloud processes
Wetter3 site for GFS model and surface charts
ManUniCast our own model
Whitworth Observatory Our own observatory here in Manchester
EUMETRAIN overlay met. fields on satellite images (via eport)
Satellite pictures from SAT24.com

Some projects I am running this year

Is climate engineering worth the effort?    Perform a cost-benefit analysis of a climate engineering proposal to mitigate against climate change.

Ice nucleation study   Investigate the effect of acidity on heteorogeneous ice nucleation to explain a problem we have found.

Automated classification of ice crystal images   There is a wealth of ice crystal image data that we have taken on various field projects. Devise a method of automatically determining their shape in this project

Ideas for future projects

A simulation of the solar system in MATLAB   use accurate ODE solvers to simulate dynamics of planetary orbits

Saturn's hexagon   write a shallow water model in polar coordinates to attempt to simulate Saturn's hexagon: a planetary-scale wave that has the appearance of a regular hexagon.

Other fun stuff

Gravitational field strengths   Calculate the gravitational field strength of different shaped objects

Gaussian Plume Model in MATLAB   Understand how vertical stability in the atmosphere affects the dispersion of pollution from a stack.