physics

Village Homes

Village Homes is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Village Homes rather than just read about it. In short: Village Homes is a planned community in Davis, Yolo County, California. It is designed to be ecologically sustainable by harnessing the energies and natural resources that exist in the landscape, especially stormwater and solar energy.

Key takeaways

Village Homes belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Village Homes to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Village Homes from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Village Homes is a planned community in Davis, Yolo County, California. It is designed to be ecologically sustainable by harnessing the energies and natural resources that exist in the landscape, especially stormwater and solar energy.

History The principal designer of Village Homes was architect Mike Corbett and his wife Judy Corbett, who began planning in the 1960s, with construction continuing from south to north from the 1970s through the 1980s. Village Homes was completed in 1982, and has attracted international attention from its inception as an early model of an environmentally friendly housing development, including a visit from then-French President François Mitterrand.

Sustainability

The 225 homes and 20 apartment units that now are the Village Homes community use solar panels for heating, and they are oriented around common areas at the rear of the buildings, rather than around the street at the front. All streets are oriented east–west, with all lots positioned north–south. This feature has become standard practice in Davis and elsewhere since it enables homes with passive solar designs to make full use of the sun's energy throughout the year. The development also uses natural drainage, called bioswales, to collect water to irrigate the common areas and support the cultivation of edible foods, such as nut and fruit trees and vegetables for consumption by residents, without incurring the cost of using treated municipal water.

References

External links http://www.villagehomesdavis.org/ Village Homes information on the Davis Wiki. http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC35/Browning.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20070609124520/http://arch.ced.berkeley.edu/vitalsigns/workup/siegel_house/vh_bkgd.html https://web.archive.org/web/20131110035906/http://www.earthfuture.com/community/villagehomes.asp

Documentary videos about Village Homes Global Gardener: Urban Permaculture feat. Bill Mollison (1991) GeoffLawton.com: Food Forest Suburb (2015)

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Village Homes

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Village Homes claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Village Homes before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Village Homes ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Village Homes

In research: Village Homes appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Village Homes in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Village Homes is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Davis, California, Permaculture, Renewable energy, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Village Homes outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Village Homes in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Village Homes means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Village Homes out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Village Homes in simple terms?

Why does Village Homes matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Village Homes?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Village Homes.