Just before the turn of the last... er... second-to-last century,
there was a feeling amongst physicists that the major problems of physics
had been solved. A few unexplained phenomena, such as the spectrum of
electromagnetic
radiation inside a heated cavity ("blackbody radiation"), and the fact
that the medium supporting that radiation (the "ether") had never
been discovered, were thought to be oddities. Beginning in 1900, and
through the mid 1920's, the work of Planck, Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg, and
others was to show that these oddities were in fact the tip of an
iceberg, which, once exposed, was to radically reshape the way human
kind thinks about the universe in which it lives. These developments - the
revolution of so-called "modern physics", will be the subject matter of
Physics 101.
Fall 2008 Syllabus
Homework
Assignments
Spacetime Paper
YouTube videos on simulaneity
and time dilation.
Online lab experiments, including electron diffraction
Java applet about localization and phase vs. group veocity
Sample questions for Midterm I
Sample questions for Midterm II
Sample questions for the Final
Uncertainty Principle Plots
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