PHY 371- Fall 2016
Instructor: Paulo Bedaque, PSC, room 3147. My email is the best way to contact me in an emergency including absence frrom an exam. The best way to ask a physics question is trough Piazza.
Lecture times: MWF 1:00pm to 1:50pm
Office hours: Mondays 2:00pm. You can
also email me to arrange for another time or try your luck and knock on
my door and see if I'm available.
Grader: Tsz Chun Tsui
Textbook: Modern Physics: An Introductory Text,
2nd edition. We will not be following the text closely and will cover
the first four parts of the book (and, maybe, a few selected topics of
the rest). On the other hand, our discussion of relativity will be
deeper. You may want to read a chapter of D. Morin's book on classical
mechanics available for free (link below) which covers relativity
in a spirit similar to ours. Finally, Introducing Quantum Theory by
J.P.McEvoy and Oscar Zarate is a little comics book with a lot of the
historical and some of the physics of the early quantum mechanics. I
encourage you to read it during the first month of class, before we
actually discuss these topics in the lecture. There is more information about the literature in Piazza.
I'll make available my notes on Piazza when available.
Grades: The grade will be based on
frequent homeworks (10%), two midterms (20% and 30% ) and one final
exam (40%). You are encouraged to work on the homeworks in groups but
the final solution write up should be entirely yours. The exams are
taken in class and are strictly individual. The goal of the homework is
to teach; the goal of the tests is to test.
Syllabus and objectives: The
goal of this class is to discuss relativity and quantum theory, the two
pillars of modern physics. We will spent about a month discussing
special relativity, including spacetime diagrams and the formalism of
four-vectors. We will then discuss the experiments leading to the
demise of classical mechanics and the conceptual revolutions they led
to, from the evidence for the existence of atoms to the creation
of the quantum mechanics. Time permitting, we will have a simplified
discussion of a few more advanced topics. Particularly enhasis will be
put on simple reasoning based on dimensional analysis and order of
magnitude estimates based on general physical principles.
Special Relativity
Galilean relativity
Speed of light is same all frames/ Michelson&Morley
and other experiment
Notion of space-time
Lorentz Transformations and invariance of the space time-interval
Applications of relativistic kinematics (eg. velocity addition;
Doppler effect) â—‹Resolution of relativistic paradoxes
4-vector notation
Energy-Momentum four-vector
Applications of relativistic dynamics in collisions and decays.
General relativity: curved spaces and the equivalence principle
Atoms
simple kinetic theory; free classical gases
Chemistry
Rutherford scattering
Quantum Mechanics
Blackbody radiation
Photoelectric effect and notion of photon
Wavenumber and momenta of photon/Compton effect
Bohr atom and concept of atomic transitions
de Broglie hypothesis/ particles as waves
Davisson-Germer experiment
Motivating the Schrodinger equation
The infinite square well
Probability interpretation of wavefunction
Uncertainty principle at a qualitative level
Some qualitative phenomena: tunneling, quantization of spectra, stability of atoms
Spin
Identical particles: bosons, fermions, periodic table
Advanced topics
Insulators, conductors and semi-conductors
The standard model of particle physics
Hadrons and nuclei
Big Bang cosmology
Interesting links
A (free!) text on special relativity, suitable for the kinematics part of relativity
A video about the Hafele-Keating experiment on time dilation I mentioned in class.
A pedagogical video about time dilation.
Excellent applet illustrating the Michelson-Morley experiment.
seen from two different frames.
English translation of Einsteins' "On the electrodynamics of moving bodies". Over a century older and perfectly understandable.
English translation of the E=mc^2 paper. Notice that the equation E=mc^2 doesn't actually appear anywhere.
A more update site with modern tests of special relativity.
Michelson-Morley by the man himself.
New York Times
announces the eclipse results and makes Einstein a household name.
first-hand account of the discovery of spin
Cathode ray tubes in fiction and in reality.
Homework
Useful links:
