The primary purpose of PH255 is to become acquainted firsthand with some of the phenomena that provided the empirical impetus for quantum mechanics and special relativity. These include the speed of light, the photoelectric effect, electron diffraction, atomic emission spectra, and nuclear decay and detection. A secondary purpose is to develop good experimental techniques and improve skills in data analysis and interpretation.

In-class work entails performing (in teams) a series of experiments and listening to short lectures on experimental technique and on data analysis and interpretation. Out-of-class work mainly consists in writing reports on the experiments which have been completed. The course grade is based on the average lab report score.

Corequisites: PH 253 (Introduction to Modern Physics)

This course is a more rigorous and sophisticated treatment of the classical mechanics topics covered in PH105. The list of topics covered includes, but is not limited to:

• Oscillations Various aspects of harmonic motion are covered including, energy considerations, damped harmonic motion, forced harmonic motion, nonlinear oscillators and nonsinusoidal driving forces.

• Noninertial Reference Frames This topic includes accelerated coordinate systems and inertial forces, rotating coordinate systems, dynamics of a particle in a rotating coordinate system, effects of the Earth's rotation and the Foucault pendulum.

• Gravitational and Central Forces The study of gravitational and central forces includes the gravitational force between a particle and a uniform sphere, Kepler's laws, the potential energy in a gravitational field and a general central field, and motion in an inverse square repulsive field.

• Dynamics of Systems of Particles The content of this topic is linear momentum, angular momentum, angular kinetic energy, collisions and rocket motion.

• Lagrangian Mechanics This important method of analyzing mechanical systems entails the development of Hamilton's variational method, generalized coordinates, Lagrange's equations of motion and Hamilton's equations.

Classical mechanics provides a basis for the study of most modern subjects in physics including quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, general relativity, astrophysics and elementary particle physics to name a few. This course and its graduate level extension provide students of physics and astronomy with the necessary tools to understand and utilize the concepts of modern physics.

Corequisites: MATH 238 (Applied Differential Equations I)

Course Content: Weekly homework, three hour-exams, one final exam.

Core Curriculum: This course carries an NS designation.

This is the second part of an intermediate level course in classical electricity and magnetism, which is one of the core courses of the undergraduate curriculum that provides an important bridge to many topics in modern physics. The course uses Griffiths' popular textbook "Introduction to Electrodynamics" and covers selected topics in Magnetic Fields in Matter, Electrodynamics, Conservation Laws, Electromagnetic Waves, Potentials and Fields, Radiation, and Electrodynamics and Relativity. These topics treat time-dependent fields and the unification of Electric and Magnetic phenomena that was accomplished by Maxwell and applies this unified theory to the description of moving charges, electromagnetic waves, radiation phenomena, and the relativistic description of electricity and magnetism. Students will be learning not only new physics related to electricity and magnetism itself, but also more general concepts and mathematical methods related to the description of fields. They will focus on solving problems concerning magnetic fields from electrical currents in wires, in atoms, and subatomic particles, including effects of electromagnetic induction and displacement current, leading to the unification of electric and magnetic fields via Maxwell's Equations.

Student work: Current densities in notched gold microwires determined from the generated magnetic fields. From left to right, the panels show: the total current density, the component of the current density perpendicular to the lines edges, and the component of the current density parallel to the line edges.

Prerequisites: PH 331 (Electricity and Magnetism I)

Learn the basics of digital electronics & computer interfacing and apply it to real world problems using the graphical programming language LabVIEW:

• Introduction to LabVIEW - how does one "write" programs graphically?
• Digital electronics - what are gates, latches, multiplexer, flip-flops etc. and how do they really work?
• Advanced LabVIEW programming - event driven programming or how to get your programs to do what the user wants them to do at any time. How to "write" programs graphically and effectively.
• Computer interfacing - the connection to the real world. How to get analog signals in and out of the computer and how to talk to other instruments using "GPIB".

Prerequisites: PH 334 (Analog Electronics) - however, since this course has not been offered recently, this is not necessary. Undergraduates should contact Dr. Mewes before signing up for this course.

Go deeper into the mysterious quantum world and learn:

• about the inner workings of atoms, molecules and nuclei
• about the strange quantum properties of angular momentum , spin and statistics
• approximation techniques which allow you to accurately compute many observable quantum effects
• about the strange paradoxes resulting from trying to mix special relativity with quantum theory
• about the hypothetical quantum computer

Prerequisites: PH 441 (Quantum Structure of Matter I)
Math Prerequisites: Some knowledge of matrix algebra and partial differential equations.

Introduction to thermal phenomena on a macroscopic and a statistical basis, and principles and laws governing them.

Prerequisites: MATH 227 (Calculus III)

Don't just memorize the properties of materials -- learn to predict them. Most properties of materials, like density, vary at most one order of magnitude (factor of 10) -- so why is the conductivity of silver 20 orders of magnitude higher than that of glass? Do you want to go through your life using cell phones, computers, etc., clueless about why they work? This course covers electrical, magnetic, thermal, and mechanical properties of materials. Topics include crystal structure, electronic band structure and the free-electron approximation, ferromagnetism.

Prerequisites: PH 441 (Quantum Structure of Matter I )