Physics 420 Home Page

Professor Andris Skuja

Fall 2006
MW 4:00 pm to 5:15 pm
Room: Physics 0405

Table of Contents:

Instructor
TAs
Text book
Assignment
Exams
Course Grade Summary
Topics
Additional Books

Your Professor for Physics 420: Andris Skuja

Prof. Skuja's office is in room 4329 of the Physics Building
His phone number is x56059
His email address is: skuja@umd.edu

Office hours:

No specific hours will be kept but you are welcome to visit at any time (no appointment needed). However, if you need to make an appointment for a specific time, please do so by making arrangements by email for a mutually satisfactory time.

TAs

Baladitya Suri
Office: Physics 0104
Office Hours: Wednesdays 2pm to 3pm

Text Book

"Concepts of Modern Physics" (6th edition)
Arthur Beiser
McGraw-Hill
ISBN 0-07-244848-2

Overview:

An Introduction to Special relativity and some elementary statistical physics will be presented. But the main emphasis of the course is quantum mechanics and its applications.

Assignments

It is important to read the material of each chapter ahead of time. We will proceed in an interactive manner, with students assigned to discuss certain sections of the textbook as well as present solutions to homework problems. Homework will be assigned weekly. The due dates will be as marked on the homework assignments,

Exams

Midterm

There will be a mid term exam based on the first 5 chapters of the text book

Final Exam

The Final Exam will be based on Chapters 1 through 10
There will be a Special Exam in Class on December 11 from 4pm to 6pm replacing the final exam. It will cover Chapters 1 thru 10 of Beiser
The final exam is scheduled for Wednesday, December 20 at 1:30pm. The Special Exam can replace the final exam.

Course Grade

MidTerm Exam	150
Final Exam	200
Homework	75
Class Participation	75

Total 500

Topics

Topics: Note that the schedule may be modified as we get further along

Chapter 1 (including Appendix I and II): Relativity	August 30 through Septeber 18
Chapter 2: Particle Properties of Waves	September 20 and September 25
Chapter 3: Wave Properties of particles	September 27 and October 2
Chapter 4: Atomic Structure	October 4 through October 11
Chapter 5 (including Appendix): Quantum Mechanics: Additional Problems	October 16 through October 30
MidTerm	November 1
Chapter 6: Hydrogen Atom	November 6 and November 8
Chapter 7: Many-electron Atoms	November 13 and November 15
Chapter 8: Molecules	November 20 and November 22
Chapter 9: Statistical Mechanics	November 27 and Noveber 29
Chapter 10: The Solid State	December 4 and December 6
SPECIAL EXAM 4pm to 6pm on December 11	December 11
Final Exam	As scheduled

Additional Books

A book that is often used for this course is: Serway, Moses and Moyer "Modern Physics" (3rd edition) (Thomson)
A book I like as an introduction to relativity is Schutz "A first course in general relativity" (Cambridge).
The first 2 (4) chapters give a good overview of special relativity
A good introduction to fields of moving charges can be found in Purcell "Electricity and Magnetism" Berkely Physics Course (volume 2) (McGraw-Hill). See chapter 5 in particular.

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