Physics 2D, Winter 2011, Reading ahead assignments
Modern physics is firmly rooted in classical physics. To fully grasp the new material it is important that you refresh your knowledge of the related topics that
you learned in previous courses. Please read ahead the following items
to prepare for the topics for each week. The numbers
indicated between () refer to the sections or pages in the
textbook by Wolfson and Pasachoff (WP), Physics, Third Edition.
If you have a different text (eg Halliday-Resnick) find the equivalent
sections by looking up keywords in the alphabetical index in the back of
the textbook.
For Week1 (Relativity I), read ahead about:
- Inertial frames, galilean invariance and relative motion (Sect. 3-5 Wolfson and Pasachoff)
- Speed of light (Sect. 34-5 WP)
- Doppler shift (17-7 WP)
For Week2 (Relativity II), read ahead about:
- Newton's second law (WP 5-2)
- Work-energy theorem (WP 7-5)
- Collisions and momentum conservation (WP 11-2)
- Law of universal gravitation (WP 9-2)
For Week3 (Quantization), read ahead about:
- Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution (p. 501), equipartition (p. 534)
- Maxwell's equations, electromagnetic waves (WP 34-3, 34-4)
- Definition of "Power" (WP 7-6)
- Power in radiation (WP page 484-486)
For Week4 (The nuclear atom), read ahead about:
- Coulomb law (WP 23-3) and electric field (WP 23-4)
- Electromagnetic force (WP 29-2)
- Electric field of a uniformly charged sphere (WP Example 24-1, page 610)
- Uniform circular motion (WP 4-4)
- Angular momentum (WP 13-3)
For Week5/6 (Matter waves), read ahead about:
- Waves and wave motion (WP 16-1, 16-2, 16-3)
- Standing waves (WP 17-6)
- Wave interference, dispersion (WP 16-6, 37-2)
For Week7,8 (Schrodinger equation), read ahead about:
- Wave equation (WP 16-7)
- Potential energy (WP 8-2)
- Conservation of mechanical energy (WP 8-3)
- Force and potential energy (WP 8-5)
- Simple harmonic motion (WP 15-2)
- Reflection and transmission of waves (35-1)
- Electric potential and potential energy (25-1,25-2,25-3)
For Week9, 10 (Atomic physics), read ahead about:
- Conservation of angular momentum (13-4)
- Refresh your memory on spherical coordinates
- Current loop as magnetic dipole (29-5 and page 774)