PHYSICS 215

Course Outline:

Relativity, Thermodynamics, Quantized systems, Atomic physics, Nuclear physics

Prerequisites:

PHY184 or PHY184A, or PHY184B, or PHY294H, or LBS267

Lecturer: 

Prof. David Tomanek
Office: 4231 Biomedical and Physical Sciences Bldg.
Phone: (517) 355-9702

Lectures:

Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, 9:10 am - 10:00 am, BPS 1420;
for details see the course schedule below.

Recitations:

Tuesday, 9:10 pm - 10:00 pm, BPS 1420;
for details see the course schedule below.

Office Hours:

After class or by appointment, 4231 Biomedical and Physical Sciences Bldg.

Textbook:

Modern Physics:
Modern Physics for Scientists and Engineers
by Thornton and Rex,
third edition, Thomson Learning,
ISBN 0-534-41781-7.

Note that the Modern Physics textbook comes together with a support web site which contains a number of useful resources for the course. Of particular interest are computer simulations, some of which will be used at the lectures. The link to the web site can be found here.

Thermodynamics:
Physics for Scientists and Engineers
by Fishbane, Gasiorowicz and Thornton,
third edition, Prentice Hall,
ISBN 0-13-035299-3.

Only chapters 17 through 20 from the “Physics for Scientists and Engineers” will be used for the PHY215 course. If you already own the second edition of any of the above text books, you can use it for the PHY215 course.

Homework:

There are 11 homework assignments, which are due on Wednesdays at 3:00 am (see the course schedule). MSU's LONCAPA system will be used for the course homework One of the advantages of the LONCAPA system is in that students may enter solutions to questions and problems and know immediately if they are right. There is no penalty for wrong answers and credit is earned for all correct answers entered before the due date of the assignment. By default there are 10 tries for each part of a homework problem.

Help:

The Teaching Assistant for the course is Kiseok Chang.  The TA's job is to assist students in homework assignments by solving example problems at the recitations. TA is available for office hours (3 h per week) on case-by-case basis appointments and is accessible via e-mail at <changkis@msu.edu>. Note that there is a discussion forum within LONCAPA, where students can post and answer questions.

Reading:

Students are expected to read the chapters listed in the course schedule prior to each lecture. There will be LONCAPA based quizzes on the reading assignments posted after each lecture with a due date at 8:00 am on the day of the corresponding lecture. Reading quizzes will provide an opportunity to communicate to the instructor problems with physics understanding of the material covered in the reading assignment priori to the lecture; special care will be taken by the instructor to address these problematic topics during the lecture.

Quizzes:

Reading quizzes will contribute to the 7% of the quiz grade. By default there is only one try for any single quiz question. In addition to the reading quizzes, there will be unannounced short quizzes during lectures and recitations.

Exams:

There will be three one-hour exams and one final exam. The final grades will be calculated based on the contributions given below.

This adds up to 102%, and includes 2% bonus points for potentially missed quizzes.

Grades:

The final grades will be calculated based on the following cut-off lines.