Course Schedule

Here is an outline of the expected structure of the course. This is the first time that I have taught the course in this form 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.

Note the following abbreviations.

Week: Topics Readings Laboratory
1: 1/17

Reflection & Refraction
Geometric Optics

HRW 34
Tay 1 & 2

Snell's Law

2: 1/24

Electrostatics: E Fields & Vector Addition

HRW 21 & 22
AdvM 5:121-126
Tay 3

Lenses & Images

3: 1/31

Electrostatics: Potential and Energy

HRW 24
Tay 4

Electrostatics

4: 2/7

Electrodynamics

I'm thinking!

E-field mapping

5: 2/14

Mass on spring
Intro. to differential equations

HRW 15:1-7
AdvM 2:38-42
Mid-term Exam I
6: 2/21

Driven oscillators and resonance
Inhomogeneous Linear ODEs

HRW 15:8-9
AdvM 3:71-74
Pendulum & Energy
7: 2/28

Coupled Oscillators, Coupled Linear ODEs
Boundary Conditions & Superposition

  Pendulum measuring g
8: 3/7 Waves on a string, Wave Equation,
Partial Differential Equations
HRW 16:1-7
AdvM 12:258-261
Resonance I
Spring Break
9: 3/28 1-D Wave Equation, Normal Modes, & Superposition
Fourier Ideas
HRW 16:8-13
HRW 17:1-4
Resonance II
Driven Osc. & Q
10: 4/4 Waves, non-standing waves
Fourier Series
HRW 17:5-10
AdvM 7:182-184
Mid-Term Exam II
11: 4/11

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

HRW 35:1-4
AdvM 7:184-185
Standing Waves on String
12: 4/18

Interference, Multiple Slits, Interferometers
Phasors

HRW 35:5-8 Speed of Sound
13: 4/25 Diffraction, Slits and Edges, Intensity
Phase Integrals
HRW 36:1-10 Wavelength of Light with a Ruler
14: 5/2 Matter waves
Ideas of a wave function and probability
HRW 38:1-6 Interference & Diffraction
5/13
Final Exam 02:00-5:00 pm.

Physics 195