| Date | Topic | Notes, etc... | Reading |
THERMODYNAMICS |
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Jan 5th | Why does heat flow from hot things to cold things? | notes | Knight, chapter 18 |
Jan 7th | Second Law of Thermodynamics. Entropy and temperature. The difference between past and future. Fundamental forces. | notes | |
| ELECTRICITY AND MAGNETISM | |||
Reading Assignment - Electrostatics |
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| Jan 12th | Charge model, static electricty, and electroscope. Coulomb's Law. | slides notes | Knight chapter 25 |
| Jan 14th | Electric field worksheet. Electric field of the dipole. Charge configurations. | slides notes worksheet solutions | Knight chapter 25 Post reading 26.1, 26.2, first section of 26.3 |
Reading Assignment - Potentials |
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| Jan 19th | Three fundamental charge configurations and their electric
field. Parallel infinitly charged plates. The motion of charge in an
electric field. Torque on a dipole. E = 0 in a conductor (from motion of charge). The electric potential energy. Path integrals. | slides notes | Knight chapter 26.5 Knight chapter 26.6, 26.7 |
Jan 21st |
The electric potential. Volta. It's Alive! Potentials Worksheet: understanding the difference between electric potential energy and electric potential. |
slides notes worksheet solutions |
Knight chapter 28.1, 28.4, 29.1, 29.3 |
| Special Lecture: General Relativity | |||
Reading Assignment - Gauss's Law |
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| Jan 26th | Gauss's Law, the idea of flux, surface vectors, and flux through a closed surface. Spraying water analogy. | slides notes worksheet solutions | Knight chapter 27.2, 27.3, 27.4 |
| Jan 28th | Finish up Gauss's Law. Maxwell and his equations. Plinko current, drift velocity, how randomly bouncing stuff can drift in a field. Microscopic connection of bouncing electrons to the charge current I, conductance, I proportional to E. | slides notes worksheet solutions RandomWalk | Knight chapters 30.1, 30.2, and 30.3 |
Reading Assignment - Current, Resistors, Capacitors and Circuits |
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| Feb 2nd | Resistance and resistivity. Capacitors and capacitance. Introduction to circuit analysis. | slides notes worksheet solutions | Knight chapters 30.1, 30.2, and 30.3, 30.5, 31.1, 31.2 |
| Feb 4th | Importance of Kirchhoff's loop law. Geometry of capacitance. The RC circuit. Decay constants. | slides notes | Knight chapters 30.5, 31.1, 31.2 |
| Feb 11th | |||
| Feb 22nd | MAGNETISM: Basic magnetic phenomena, how to define the magnetic field. Reading Assignment - Magnetism | notes clicker questions | Knight chapter 32 |
| Feb 24th | Magnetic fields from currents and moving charges. Origin of magnetic field from magnets. | notes worksheet worksheet solutions | Knight chapter 32 |
| Mar 1st | Effects of magnetic field. Force on a moving charge. Charged particles orbiting in magnetic fields. Forces on current-carrying wires. Electric motors. | notes clicker questions | Knight chapter 32 |
| Mar 3rd | Quantifying the strength of a magnet. Definition of magnetic moment and torque on magentic moments. Introduction to induction. Lenz's Law, motional EMF. | notes clicker questions Magnetism Summary | Knight chapter 32, Knight chapters 33.1, 33.2, 33.4 |
| Mar 8th | Motional emf, Faraday's Law, and Lenz's Law. Induced electric fields. | notes clicker questions | Knight chapters 33.5-33.6 |
| Mar 10th | Line Integrals, integral form of Faraday's Law. Conservation of charge, Ampere/Maxwell Law, Summary of Electromagnetism, Electromagnetic radiation. | notes clicker questions notes | Knight chapters 34.3, 34.4, 34.6, 34.7 |
| FOURTH MIDTERM SOLUTIONS | |||
WAVES | |||
| Mar 20 | Types of waves, why waves show up all over the place, basic properties of waves Snapshot vs history graphs | notes clicker questions | |
| Mar 23 | Mathematical descriptions of waves, sinusoidal waves, frequency, wavelength, and velocity | notes clicker questions | |
| Mar 25 | Light in a medium, constructive and destructive interference, thin films | notes clicker questions | |
QUANTUM MECHANICS |
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| March 30 | Double slit interference, photons, Photon interpretation of the double slit experiment. Quantum superpositions. Wavefunctions. | notes clicker questions | Knight chapter 38.3, 39 notes on quantum mechanics |
| April 1 | Quantum measurement. Wavefunctions for states with definite position and definite momentum. | notes on quantum mechanics | |
| April 7 | Writing functions as sums of pure waves. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. | ||
| April 8 | Time dependence of wavefunction. The Schrodinger Equation. Schrodinger equation for particles with forces/potentials. Trapping of wavefunctions. Energy eigenstates, bound states and tunneling. | Knight 40.1-40.4,Knight 40.6,40.10 | |
Special lectures |