PHYC20010: Quantum Mechanics and Special Relativity

One written assignment per module (5% each); One 30 minute mid-semester test covering Quantum Mechanics (5%); Six laboratory reports (total 20%); One 3 hour examination (65%) - N.B. Passing the practical component (>50%) of the course is a hurdle requirement, as is attending, and submitting a report for, at least 5 out of 6 practicals.

(General) The tutors are pretty good and are helpful. For Quantum Mechanics we often had Jeff at the tutorials to help us in addition to the regular tutor. Like all subjects it is advisable to attend tutorials... Practicals work the same way as PHYC20009, explained above. However they are more interesting; they include measuring the speed of light, Young's double-slit experiment, and the photoelectric effect.

(Quantum Mechanics) There is a reason why quite a lot of non-physics majors sign up to take this subject - Quantum Mechanics, which takes up about 3/4 of the course. It is worth the (mathematical) effort; it is probably the most intellectually stimulating physics subject at the second-year level. After recapping black-body radiation and the Bohr model, we were introduced to Fourier transforms and Walter White's (sorry, couldn't resist!) Uncertainty Principle. Then we were finally introduced to quantum mechanics itself, with the Born interpretation and operators (including the Hamiltonian), and then the Schrödinger equation. I kid you not when I say this module mainly revolves around manipulating and solving the Schrödinger equation - you'd better be good at solving second-order ODEs with constant coefficients. After being introduced to commutators and exploring solutions to the Schrödinger equation for tricky potentials such as the harmonic oscillator, we were hurriedly exposed to 3D quantum mechanics. Don't worry if you don't understand much of this last section - it really doesn't make much sense until you take MAST20030 or some other PDE course. Anyway there's usually just one easy question on it in the exam. The lecturer Jeff McCallum is quite good, and very helpful - if you don't understand some aspect of the material you are in luck because generally he comes to the tutorials too. The assignment was very managable, and so was the quantum mechanics section of the exam (2/3 of the exam).

(Special Relativity) SR takes up the last 3 weeks of the course, and it should have been brilliant. I cannot lie, though. It wasn't. It was horrible. The material itself wasn't extremely challenging, at least in hindsight. The problem was that instead of the head of the astrophysics research group, Rachel Webster, teaching this module as she had in previous years, we instead were taught by a Research Fellow by the name of Edward Taylor. While Ned was certainly enthusiastic, by virtue of being a first-time lecturer he was rather incompetent in teaching the material, to the extent that it became rather incomprehensible to most of us. It also did seem that he wasn't managing the time allotted to SR particularly well. The last lecture was ostensibly spent introducing us to General Relativity, but perhaps a better description would be "confusing the hell out of us all". In comparison to QM, the assignment for SR was ridiculous in every sense of the word. Not only was it very difficult, but the first half involved the following scenario - "Imagine that it is a cloudless night, with no moon, and that you are a bat." A relativistic bat, to be more precise... The SR section of the exam (which was about a third of the whole) was also unbelievably hard, with questions that should have been worth 5 marks worth only one, and so on. I couldn't even finish half of the SR section of the exam because it was so different to those of previous years, rendering most of my revision worthless.

(Summary) If you are lucky enough to get a decent lecturer for Special Relativity, this may be the best subject you take in second-year. Otherwise...

Yes, with screen capture. However, Jeff (Quantum) generally preferred to do his calculations on the whiteboard.

Quantum Mechanics - A/Prof. Jeffrey McCallum. Special Relativity - Dr. Edward Taylor.

Yes, from 2009 onwards. However for Thermal Physics, there are exams for 640-223 Quantum Mechanics and Thermal Physics from 1999 - 2008, and for Special Relativity there are exams for 640-245 Electromagnetism & Relativity over the same period since these were the predecessors of the current course. N.B. Do not attempt the exams for the "Advanced" version of 640-223 or 640-245 unless you want a challenge - believe me, you won't!

5 Out of 5 - note however that while the Quantum Mechanics module, in almost every respect, is simply brilliant, the way in which the Special Relativity module was taught was shockingly awful. Only the fact that the material is interesting saves it from utter condemnation...

Serway, Moses and Moyer, Modern Physics 3rd Ed. Brooks/Cole-Thomson Learning, 2005 - this book is absolutely wonderful, definitely buy it. Just be aware that it is not 'rigorous' enough to be used in later years (e.g. no bra-ket/Dirac notation).

For Special Relativity, I'd recommend "Wheeler and Taylor, Spacetime Physics" which is easily found online. However, what is required for this module is not so much a reference textbook but a divine intervention or such like, especially if you get Ned Taylor like we did...

3 x 1 hour lectures per week; 1 x 1 hour problem-solving class per week; 6 x 3 hour practical classes per semester (every alternate week - one can schedule these to be in the same timeslot, but alternating with, those for PHYC20009)

Semester 1, 2013

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