Site Archives General 1 Exam
Week Nineteen - Strategy
Finis! Closing thoughts and some exam strategies from Georg Polya. Music: “Operator” by the Grateful Dead and “Lobachevsky (Plagerize!)” by Tom Lehrer.
Week Eighteen - Scattering
Kinematics, impact parameter, differential and total cross section, scattering of electromagnetic waves, 1 dimensional quantum mechanical scattering, Born approximation and optical theorem. Music: “Alphabet Street” by Prince, “American Pie” by Don McLean.
Week Seventeen - Two state systems
This week: two state qunatum mechanical systems. Spin 1/2 and rotations, time independent perturbations, time dependent perturbations leading to emission and absorption, NMR and MASERS. Music: “Summer Wind” by Lyle Lovett, “Frank’s Wild Years” by Tom Waits and “Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Week Sixteen - The Hydrogen Atom
Quantum mehanical hydorgen atom: Bohr model, unperturbed Schrodinger model, Stark, relativistic, fine and Zeeman perturbations, interaction with radiation field and hyperfine transitions. Music: “Sister Christian” by Night Ranger and “Everybody Knows” by Leonard Cohen.
Week Fifteen - Quantum Mechanics (Basics)
The basic ideas of quatnum mechanics: de Broglie waves, Stern-Gerlac experiment, Heisenberg uncertainty principle, operators, bra, kets and wave mechanics. Music: “Kite Flying Society” by Mark Mothersbaugh and “In Dreams” by Roy Orbison.
Week Fourteen - Temperature Scales
Temperature scales from absolute zero, through Bose-Einstein condensates to the Big Bang. Music: “O Tannenbaum”, “Linus and Lucy” and “Christmas Time is Here” by Vince Guaraldi.
Week Thirteen and a half - Statistical Mechanics
Statisitcal mechanics: closed system, counting states, definition of entropy, Boltzman factor, free energy, Giibs factor. Example systems: zipper, ideal gas, black body raditiation, spin system. Music: “Queen Bitch” by David Bowie, “Bomb the Twist” and “Woo Hoo” by the 5, 6, 7, 8s.
Week Thirteen - Hurry Up!
I’m sick, so this is the first of two podcasts this week. We go into the Hurry Up, two minute warning, now or never phase for the last third of the time beofre General I. Ten minutes on getting started so we’re all there on Jan. 28. Music: “There is a war”, Leonard Cohen.”Statistical Mechanics” will be posted on Thursday.
Week Twelve - Optics
This week: optics. Electromagnetic waves, wave tracing and geometric optics, lenses, f-stop, Fresnel and Frauenhofer differaction, interferometers. Music: “Edward Appleby (In memorium)” by Mark Mothersbaugh, “tcp d2 nnn english irdial” from the Conet Project, Bach, “Cello Suite #1 in G, 2. Allemande”
Week Eleven - Thermodynamics
“Increasing, decreasing,Decreasing, Increasing,Who the hell caresWhat entropy does?”Classical thermodynamics, the mystery of what heat is, thermodynamic potentials, the four laws, Carnot cycle, ideal gases and polyatrops. Music: “In the Midnight” by Van Morrison and “Loquasto International Film Festival” by Mark Mothersbaugh.
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