Physics 102 Modern Physics Winter Physics 102

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1 Physics 102 Class Instructor: Robert P. Johnson Office: 323 Nat. Sci. II Phone: Office hours: 10:00 11:00 W, 11:30 12:30 Th, 11:00 12:00 F Lecture: M,W,F 2:40 to 3:45, Thimann Lecture Hall Room 1 Discussion Sections: 5:05 to 6:10 Wednesdays, ISB 231 Teaching Assistant: Brett Gohre, office: ISB bgohre@ucsc.edu Office hours: Fridays 1:00 to 2:00 pm Student Accommodations UC Santa Cruz is committed to creating an academic environment that supports its diverse student body. If you are a student with a disability who requires accommodations to achieve equal access in this course, please submit your Accommodation Authorization Letter from the Disability Resource Center (DRC) to me privately preferably within the first two weeks of the quarter. At that time, I would also like us to discuss ways we can ensure your full participation in the course. I encourage all students who may benefit from learning more about DRC services to contact DRC by phone at or by at drc@ucsc.edu. Textbook and Reading Assignments The textbook for this course is Modern Physics by Randy Harris, as used in previous offerings of this course. Either the first or second edition is okay, but the section numbers in the reading assignments will be given for the second edition (the only one that I have a copy of). I will always type all of the homework assignments, instead of referring to the course textbook, or any other text. Therefore, owning the second edition of the Harris book will not be essential for doing the assignments. There is a plethora of books on modern physics at this level. Each has strengths and weaknesses, and I really cannot say which one is the best. Feedback on the textbook is always welcome. Because of the Physics 5D prerequisite, I will assume that you have already studied the Special Theory of Relativity, so that subject will not be included at all in this course. I will also assume that you have seen in 5D some of the introductory material on quantum physics, in particular the photoelectric effect, the Compton effect, matter waves, atomic spectra, and perhaps the Bohr model. Therefore we will start with Chapter 4 of the textbook and cover most of the rest of the book, but omitting Chapter 9, Statistical Mechanics (because I prefer to leave all of that for Physics 112). In any case, it is important to read the textbook assignments regularly and carefully. To encourage such good habits and to better prepare you for the lectures, for most lectures I will post reading quizzes on ecommons that are to be completed in advance of each 1

2 corresponding lecture. They will count a small percentage in your final grade, although I will drop from the grading the quiz with your lowest score. Lectures and Class Participation Lecture attendance is expected of all students. I will not have time to cover in the lectures everything that you should be studying or should need to know, so proper attention to the reading assignments is necessary in addition to lecture participation. I will generally avoid going much beyond what is in the textbook, since it covers plenty of topics for a 10-week course. I encourage you to ask many questions. If something is not clear to you, then very likely it is unclear also to many of your classmates. Both you and they will benefit if you speak up and ask the question during lecture, so please don t hesitate to interrupt me. However, I do want to try to get all students actively engaged, not just the few who frequently ask questions. Therefore, I will use the i>clicker classroom response system in a manner similar to what we commonly do in introductory physics courses. Participation is mandatory only in the sense that it will count for 5% of your course grade. Roughly 2/3 of the credit will be for participation, while 1/3 will be based on providing correct answers. Any of the following may be used to participate in lectures: The original i>clicker i>clicker + i>clicker 2 The mobile application, REEF Polling by i>clicker, which can be used on any smart phone or tablet. If you already have an i>clicker remote, then all you have to do is register it at no cost on the Physics 102 ecommons site (you may find that it is already registered because of prior usage at UCSC). Otherwise, either you will need to purchase an i>clicker remote (online or from the Bay Tree bookstore) and register it at no additional cost on the Physics 102 ecommons site, or else use the REEF Polling option with your smart phone or tablet. If you forget to bring your device on a given day you may ask me for a loaner i>clicker for that one lecture. I usually have one or two available. Be aware that using a fellow student s i>clicker in class in place of or in addition to your own is considered to be cheating and a violation of the University academic integrity policies. Special instructions for REEF Polling by i>clicker REEF polling is less expensive if you do not already own an i>clicker and do not expect to need one in future classes. To create a REEF-Polling-by-i>clicker account, visit app.reef-education.com or download the app for ios or Android (e.g. from the Google Play Store). Creating an account automatically starts a free 14-day trial subscription. Please use this trial period to make sure REEF Polling will work for all of your i>clicker classes before purchasing a subscription, as it is not possible to receive a refund after you purchase a subscription. 2

3 Once you create your REEF Polling account, be sure that you ve added your AIS student ID (the name that appears in your campus , not your numerical ID) to your profile to complete the registration process. At the end of your trial, should you decide to purchase REEF Polling, you can purchase access to REEF Polling in a variety of subscription lengths using your credit card online or through in-app purchase with your smartphone. The subscription will include an unlimited number of courses. In the system this course is Physics 102, Modern Physics, and the Course ID is Web Sites The course web page is You will find links there to this syllabus and to ecommons, where I will post everything else, such as material presented in lectures, assignments, homework and exam solutions, and your grades. The online quizzes will also be found there, as well as announcements, a complete class schedule, grade book, supplemental readings, etc. Office Hours and Discussion Sections My office hours are a good time to find me in my office and work with me on the lecture or homework material. I have tried to stagger the times through the week so that hopefully everybody can make it to at least one of the hours. I encourage you to make use of this time, which is dedicated to you. You will always find me busy doing something, but don t let that deter you, as these times are set aside for you. Besides helping you, it also helps me to get to know you and to learn about what questions and issues are arising among my students, which is difficult to know in the much less personal lecture environment. The discussion section will be led by the teaching assistant Brett Gohre. Participation is highly recommended but not mandatory (i.e. we will not record attendance). Brett will summarize topics covered by the homework assignment and will typically select one or two of the most representative or difficult problems on the assignment to work on in section, where he will provide guidance in setting up the solution. He will run the discussion as an open forum and will encourage all participants to ask and answer questions. Before exams he will typically devote at least half of a class session to group problem-solving exercises of exam-level problems. Homework Assignments Be forewarned that the presentation of your homework solutions will count, not just the calculations and results, because the grader needs to be able to review your work. Please work out the problems first on scratch paper and then write out a clear presentation of your solution for us to grade. In general your solutions should include some short English explanations or labels, not just calculations. While we do want to see all of your final calculations, we do not want to see your messy scratch work. The grader will not be obliged to give full credit if your work is difficult or impossible to follow, regardless of whether you think it is correct. I do not want you to use Mathematica, or any other symbolic algebra tool (e.g. Wolfram Alpha), as a crutch. I do not want to see any printout of computer-generated algebraic 3

4 solutions in the homework that you turn in for grading. I prefer that you use integral tables to work integrals (unless you do them yourself). The small table of integrals inside the front cover of the textbook will take care of most of your needs. Your homework solutions also should not skip large amounts of algebra and then present a computergenerated result. However, you may check your work with such tools, and I cannot prevent you from using them to guide you to a solution. Do note that the algebra in all assignments will be at a level that you should be able to accomplish without a computer (and remember, computers will not be allowed on exams). On the other hand, you are welcome and strongly encouraged to use Mathematica, Mathcad, Matlab, Excel, Wolfram-Alpha, Gnuplot or any other computer program to do numerical calculations and/or plot results. Exams and Grading There will be two exams. The midterm exam will cover the first four homework assignments (essentially through Chapter-6 of the textbook). The final exam will be comprehensive. The geniuses who make the University schedule are giving us zero weekdays between the last lecture and the final exam and also made the winter schedule one fewer lecture days than other quarters. Because of that I have had to cut out some material from the syllabus. Course grades will be based on the assignments, quizzes, and exams as follows: Lecture participation: 5% (The lowest lecture score will be dropped.) Homework: 20% Reading quizzes: 5% (The lowest quiz score will be dropped.) Midterm exam: 25% Final exam: 45% Detailed Syllabus See the table on the following page. I will update this syllabus online throughout the quarter if and when necessary. You can see that I intend to follow very closely the existing organization of the textbook. Nevertheless, there are many other textbooks on this subject at the same level, or somewhat higher level, available in the library and elsewhere, which you are welcome to make use of. You are also encouraged to make use of Volume 3 of the Feynman Lectures on Physics. It is available for free use online (see the link in ecommons). 4

5 Jan 9 Jan 11 Jan 13 Jan 16 Jan 18 Syllabus Date Topic Reading HW Matter waves, free-particle wave equation The uncertainty principle, observer, wave packets 4.4, 4.5, 4.7 Stationary states; bound states #1 Jan 20 Jan 23 Jan 25 Jan 27 Jan 30 Feb 1 Feb 3 Feb 6 Feb 8 Feb 10 Feb 13 Feb 15 Feb 17 Feb 20 Feb 22 Feb 24 Feb 27 Mar 1 Mar 3 Mar 6 Mar 8 Mar 10 Mar 13 Mar 15 Mar 17 Mar 20 Holiday Infinite and finite potential wells Simple harmonic oscillator, Numerical Solutions Expectation values and operators Non-stationary states, eigenvalues Potential step, barriers, tunneling Alpha decay Wave packets and dispersion 3D Schrödinger Equation and infinite well Central force; Quant. of Energy and Momentum Hydrogen atom Hydrogen atom solutions; photon emission Midterm Exam Angular momentum and spin Identical particles; Pauli Exclusion Principle Holiday Multi-electron atoms; Characteristic X-rays Spin-orbit interaction and adding angular momenta External magnetic fields, the Zeeman effect Molecular bonding Fermi energy, crystals and energy bands Conductors, insulators, semiconductors Semiconductor devices; Superconductivity Nuclear structure and binding Forces and particles, accelerators & experiments Decay modes and conservation laws Review Final Exam from 8:00 to 11:00 am 5.5, , 5.10 # , , 6.2 # , # , , 8.3 #5 8.4, , 8.7 # , , 10.4, 10.5 #7 10.6, , # #9 5

Spring 2015 Natural Science I: Quarks to Cosmos CORE-UA 209. SYLLABUS and COURSE INFORMATION.

Spring 2015 Natural Science I: Quarks to Cosmos CORE-UA 209 Professor Peter Nemethy SYLLABUS and COURSE INFORMATION. Office: 707 Meyer Telephone: 8-7747 ( external 212 998 7747 ) e-mail: peter.nemethy@nyu.edu