University of Maryland

Department of Physics

 

Fall 2010              Prof. Carter Hall               Physics 401

 

Title: Quantum Physics I: Introduces some quantum phenomena leading to wave-particle duality. Schroedinger theory for bound states and scattering in one dimension. One-particle Schroedinger equation and the hydrogen atom.

 

Prerequisite: PHYS273.  Corequisites: PHYS374 and MATH240.

 

Instructor: Prof. Carter Hall, Room 4211, Phone: 5-6103, e-mail: crhall@umd.edu.

 

Office Hours: Feel free to come by my office at any time, and I'll be happy to talk to you. If you want to make sure that I'll be there, schedule an appointment with me via email.

 

TA: Yong Zhao, email: yongzhao1018@gmail.com

 

Schedule:

Three meetings weekly:  M,W,F........ 10:00 am - 10:50 pm  (PHYS 1201)  

                                          W.................11:00 am - 11:50 pm  (PHYS 1201)

 

Text: We will not closely follow any single textbook, and the homework will not be drawn from a book. Therefore I will not require you to purchase any particular book.  However, I recommend that you purchase one of the following optional books (any edition):

 

·         David Griffiths, Introduction to Quantum Mechanics. Griffiths does not fully cover all of the topics that we will discuss in class, but his textbook is a good place to start learning quantum mechanics. It is likely that Griffiths will be the required textbook for Phys 402 in the spring semester.

 

·         Richard Liboff, Introductory Quantum Mechanics, Liboff puts more emphasis on Dirac notation, and my lecture material will be somewhat closer to Liboff than Griffiths.

 

Homework: There will be a total of 12 homework assignments. The homework assignment will be posted on the course website each Thursday, and will be due in class at 10:00 am the following Wednesday.  It is the student's responsibility to check the website for the assignment each week. You are encouraged to work together on the homework assignments, but each student must submit their own original work. Because we have a considerable amount of material to cover this semester, I will occasionally ask you to work through some of the material ahead of time as part of the homework assignment. For these problems, and for some of the other problems, the optional textbooks listed above will be very useful.

 

We will work some of the homework problems on the board in the second session on Wednesday (11:00 - 11:50 am). Therefore no late homework will be accepted. Also, no make-up homework will be accepted, but the lowest two homework grades will be dropped when your final grade is calculated.

 

Exams: We will have two take-home exams. The exams will be distributed at the end of class on  Monday, September 27th and Monday, November 1st, and they will be due at the beginning of the next class period.   The final exam will take place on Saturday December 18th, from 8:00 am to 10:00 am in PHYS 1201.

 

Dropping the Course:

Note: the last day to drop without a “W” is September 13th.  The last day to drop with a "W" is November 8th.

 

Grading:

Two mid-term exams:           40% total

Final exam:                             30%

Homework:                            30%