Course Schedule

Here is an outline of the expected structure of the course. This is based on the last time that I have taught this course so this is going to be only a rough guide. It is likely to be fairly accurate at first and to get steadily less and less tied to reality the further out into the future you go. This is reflected in the fact that I have not filled in all the readings yet.

Note the following abbreviations.

Week: Topics Readings Laboratory
1: 1/18

Mass on spring
Intro. to differential equations

HRW 15:1-5
Tay 1 & 2

Pendulum & Energy
2: 1/25 Driven oscillators and resonance
Inhomogeneous Linear ODEs
HRW 6-9
Tay 3
Pendulum measuring g
3: 2/1

Coupled Oscillators & Normal Modes

Tay 4

Resonance I
4: 2/8 Coupled Linear ODEs
Boundary Conditions & Superposition


Resonance II
Driven Osc. & Q
5: 2/15 Waves on a string
Wave Equation, Partial Differential Equations
HRW 16:1-7 Mid-term Exam I
6: 2/22 1-D Wave Equation, Normal Modes, & Superposition
Fourier Ideas
HRW 16:8-13 Standing Waves on String
7: 3/1

Waves, non-standing waves
Fourier Series

HRW 17:1-4 Speed of Sound
8: 3/8 Sound, Beats, Doppler, Instruments
Fourier Analysis & Timbre
HRW 17:5-10 Electrostatics
Spring Break
9: 3/29 Electric Fields
Vector Addition
HRW 22 E-field mapping
10: 4/5 Electric Potentials and Energy HRW 24 Mid-Term Exam II
11: 4/12

Waves in >1-D, Light, Interference
Phase, Complex Representations

HRW 35:1-4 B-Field Plotting
12: 4/19

Interference, Multiple Slits, Interferometers
Phasors

HRW 35:5-8 Snell's Law
13: 4/26 Diffraction, Slits and Edges, Intensity
Phase Integrals
HRW 36:1-10 Lenses & Images
14: 5/3 Matter waves
Ideas of a wave function and probability
HRW 38:1-6 Interference & Diffraction
5/13
Final Exam 07:00-10:00 pm.

Physics 195