NOTE (4/28/05): Final individual grades have been submitted
to the Registrar's Office. You should be able to see them on line shortly at the Registrar's website,
so I will not post them here. But you can see the
Final Spreadsheet
(without names) or final grade histogram.
or the
final exam histogram if you like.
Enjoy your summer break!
NOTE (4/22/05): The histogram from exam3 is available here. This
histogram also shows pre-final grades (i.e. grades prior to final exam).
You can also see your official quiz average, Exam-3 grade, and pre-final
course grade on the Current Grade Spreadsheet by
clicking here. Each row in the spreadsheet corresponds to
one student. The file contains only the grades, not the names. The rows are in random order; the students are not
listed alphabetically or by UFID, SSN, etc.
You should be able to figure out which row is yours, and from the data you
can see where you stand in PHY4523. Let me know ASAP if you detect
any errors or discrepancies. Some old, unreturned quizzes are available in an
envelope outside my office (NPB 2362).
Wednesday April 27th, 2005:
The Final Examination will be given on
Wednesday 4/27/05 at 12:30 - 2:30 pm. Location is our usual classroom.
Wednesday, April 20, 2005: Midterm Exam #3 given in class.
Exam covers chapters 8, 9, and 10 of Bowley & Sanchez.
The Formula Sheet, Exam, and Solutions are posted
at the bottom of this page. Unfortunately there is an arithmetic error in the
solution to the first question -- see annotation in the PDF key.
Note: The results of the grading survey were almost unanimous. We
will use grading method B. This means that the letter grades
that were assigned to Midterm exams I and II are now only approximate,
estimated grades.
Week of April 4, 2005:
Quiz #10 is a take-home quiz.
It is due in class on Friday 4/8/05. You may work with a friend but you
must identify your collaborators.
Monday: Finish with chapter 8 (heat capacity theories of Einstein, Debye).
Begin Chapter 9.
Wednesday: Begin discussing Chapter 9.
Friday: Mostly finished with Chapter 9.
Reading: Read chapter 9 (chemical potentials and the grand canonical
ensemble).
Homework: In chapter 9, problems 1, 3, 4, 5, 9.
Grading discussion: Several people have requested an alternative scheme
for calculating the final grades in PHY4523. I will consider the results of a
class vote on this issue. Please consider the following two options and email your vote to me before the end of this week:
Method A - I assign a letter grade for each midterm exam, and for
the final exam and quiz grades. Then, at the end of the semester, I weight
these letter grades and give you the letter grade that is determined by that
weighted sum.
Pros: This allows you to calculate your current grade average easily.
Cons: Grades may either suffer or benefit from considerable roundoff error.
Method B - I give you a percentage grade for each midterm exam,
and for the final exam and quiz grades. Then at the end of the semester, I
weight those averages and calculate a final percentage grade for you. I then draw
in letter grade boundaries at this point.
Pros: This eliminates much of the roundoff error in grading.
Cons: You won't be able to estimate your letter grade until the very end of the
semester.
Week of March 28, 2005:
The midterm exam has been graded.
Friday: We will talk about some additional applications of the Planck
law. We will have Quiz #9, covering sections 8.1-8.6.
Monday & Wednesday: We concluded our discussion of sections 1-6 of Chapter 8.
Click here to download the
famous Einstein 1905 paper on black body radiation and the photoelectric effect (English translation)
NO CLASS ON FRIDAY 3/25/2005 -- tell your friends when
you see them.
Mon-Fri: This is the week of the APS March Meeting. I will
be out of town all week. Prof. Meisel will lead the class.
You can email me if you like, but if you really
have an urgent situation you should contact Prof.
Meisel.
Monday: Feel free to bring your exam review questions for Prof. Meisel.
Midterm Exam #2 will be given in class on Wednesday
March 23.
This exam will cover Chapters 4, 5, 6, 7 and sections 8.1-8.2
of Bowley & Sanchez.
Week of March 14, 2005:
NOTE: I have added some additional homework problems
for Chapter 7. ... The complete list of recommended Chap.7 problems appears below
(see Week of 3/7/05).
Monday: Begin discussions of black body radiation (section 8.1)
Wednesday: Further discussions of black body radiation (sections 8.1 - 8.2)
Friday: Conclude discussion of sections 8.1 - 8.2. Quiz #8 on Chapter 7 (Maxwell-Boltzmann).
Reading: Chapter 8 of Bowley & Sanchez (The Planck Distribution)
Week of February 28, 2005: Enjoy your Spring Break!
Week of February 21, 2005:
Monday: Conclude discussions of Chapter 5 (Canonical Ensemble)
especially sections 5.11, 5.15
Wednesday: No office hours today!. Email me if you need to meet with
me. Today we are exactly at mid semester. We begin Chapter 6 (Identical Particles)
Friday: We concluded our discussion of Chapter 6. We had Quiz #6 on Chapter 5.
Reading: Chapter 6 of Bowley & Sanchez.
Homework: In chapter 6, problems 2, 4, 6, 8, 9
Week of February 14, 2005:
Friday: In class - continue our discussion of the ideal gas and other
famous partition functions.
Wednesday: We had Quiz #5, covering sections 5.1-5.3 of Bowley & Sanchez. We also discussed some homework problems, Z for the ideal gas (section 5.8) and the
factorization of Z (section 5.13).
Monday: We discussed sections 5.3-5.5 of Chapter 5
Week of February 7, 2005:
Monday: Conclude Chapter 4 (The ideas of statistical mechanics)
Additional Homework Problem: What on earth does 'canonical' mean?.
Old homework solution: Previously you were asked to determine the lowest
values of N for which Stirling's approximation provides 10% and
1% accuracy. The best way to do this is to calculate (in Excel, Matlab, etc.)
the difference between Exact (= logN!) and Approx
(= N log N - N). You can then
calculate the fractional error ( Exact - Approx )/ Exact and plot
that error as a function of N.
Click here to see that graph.
You'll see that the approximation is pretty good for N = 10, and it becomes excellent for N larger than 100. (I apologize for the
error in the formula that appears in the title of the graph). In fact, there
is another form of Stirling's approximation that is significantly more
accurate than the one we are using, although just slightly more complicated.
Look that up by clicking here.
Week of January 31, 2005:
Midterm Exam #1 will be held in class on Friday Feb
4 2005. The exam will cover all topics discussed in class up through
Friday Jan 28. That includes Chapters 1,2,3 and sections 4.1 - 4.3 of
Bowley & Sanchez, plus kinetic theory & equipartition. All material in
those sections of the textbook is fair game. Of course, your lecture
notes and homework assignments are your best guide as to what I consider
to be important.
Additional Homework: Please also consider the famous "Monty Hall Problem"
stated below:
Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of
three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You
choose a door, say No. 1. Then the host, who knows what's behind the other
doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says
to you, 'Do you want to switch to door No. 2?' Is it to your advantage to
take the switch?
(You may assume that the host always offers such a choice to his
contestants.)
Note that there is a great deal written about this problem on the internet. Not all of it is correct.
Reading: Chapter 4 (The ideas of statistical mechanics).
Week of January 17, 2005:
Monday: No class (MLK)
Wednesday: Quiz #2 on kinetic theory.
(Note: In the key for Quiz #2, there is a math error in part b of the second problem. The correct
answer should be approximately 13000 m.)
Further discussion
of Chapter 2 (thermodynamics).
(statistics)
Friday: Conclude Chapter 2 and begin discussing Chapter 3
Homework: Click here to download the Special Homework
Assignment on kinetic theory. This homework is not for handing in.
It is for doing.
Reading: Chapter 3.
Week of January 10, 2005:
Monday 1/10/05 - Quiz #1 (Chapter 1)
In class: A quick introduction to the kinetic theory of gases. For a
reference see your old thermodynamics book.
Also: Review of thermodynamics. Heat, energy, work, entropy. The
2nd and 3rd laws of thermodynamics.
Reading: Chapter 2 of Bowley & Sanchez (Entropy and the second law of thermodynamics)