Physics 2213b Modern Physics Honors Section

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Physics 2213b Modern PhysicsHonors Section
Professor Rick Trebino Howey Physics
Building Room N011 4-1690 Cell phone
404-510-1690 rick.trebino_at_physics Class time MWF
11-12 Office hours after class Or email me. Or
call my cell phone anytime! Class TA
Lina Xu, N012, Howey Physics Building gth665y_at_mai
l.gatech.edu
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Welcome to Modern Physics!
Now that youve gotten the boring physics courses
out of the way, we can do the fun stuff! Modern
Physics will take you from the 19th century up to
the 21st! Its all the ideas that have changed
the world!
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Some minor administrivia
This class is as paperless as possible, and Ill
email you homework assignments and other news or
put them on the web. Ill get a list of your
email addresses soon, but feel free to send me an
email with your GA Tech email address. And itd
be nice if youd also include your major,
telephone number, and anything else youd like to
tell me. This way, I can tailor the course to
your needs and let you know if we have to, say,
cancel a class.
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Bedtime reading
Course required text Modern Physics for
Scientists and Engineers (3rd ed.)
by Thornton Rex
Recommended book A Student's Guide to
Fourier Transforms, J.F. James
Other helpful books
Optics, 4th ed., Eugene Hecht Introduction to
Modern Optics, G.R. Fowles (15) Modern Physics,
Bernstein, et al. (Prentice-Hall) Modern Physics,
Krane (Wiley) Modern Physics for Scientists and
Engineers, Taylor, et al (Prentice Hall) Physics
for Scientists and Engineers, extended version,
Tipler (Freeman) Modern Physics, Serway, et al
(Brooks Cole) Modern Physics, Ohanian (Prentice
Hall) Concepts of Modern Physics, Beiser
(McGraw-Hill)
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My lectures are on the web.
All my lectures are in PowerPoint and will be on
my web site www.physics.gatech.edu/frog (click
on Lectures). Please download them before
class, so you dont have to take many notes in
class.
Ill be creating and continually modifying them
as the term progresses, so its best not to
download them all the first day, and instead to
download each lecture a day or two before class.
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Homework
Homework will be due on its due date at 5PM in
our TAs mail box in the physics officenot in
class or under my door. We'll try to grade and
return the homework within a few days.
Everyone will be allowed to turn in one
assignment late (due the following class or when
we return the home-work, whichever is later
email our TA, who will keep track of this).
You can work with others on homework (I
encourage you to do so!), but write it up
yourself.
HW problems shouldnt re-quire many pages each,
so if youre having trouble, talk to us.
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Quizzes and other detestable stuff
There will be three quizzes, which we'll try to
return to you by the following class. Quiz
dates (all Fridays) Feb. 8 Mar. 14 Apr.
18 Ill drop your lowest quiz score, so if
youre sick or just having a bad day on quiz day,
dont worry. There will be no final, but there
will be a term project. Grading Each quiz
25 Homework 25 Project 25.
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Term Project
There will be a term project. It will involve
creating a PowerPoint lecture on an advanced
Modern Physics subject of your choice (Ill
make suggestions). Dont worry you wont
have to present it just create it. (In doing
this, youve given me implicit permission to put
an edited version of it in the class lectures on
my web site for dissemination to anyone teaching
optics to anyonewith credit given to you for
creating it. Thanks!) Itll be due about the
last class day of the term.
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No ones perfect. So we give lots of partial
credit.
But you must say what youre doing! Write a lot
of text in addition to equations in your homework
and quizzes.
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The Importance of Having Class
You should come to class because theres a lot
that Ill say that wont be in the Power Point
files. And which will be on the quizzes.

• In the past, people who have skipped a lot of
  classes have received very bad grades.
  Conversely, people whove come to most or all of
  the classes nearly always receive As and Bs.

A typical Modern Physics class
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There will be a Class Party!
Meet your classmates, my grad students, and
others whove taken my courses in the past (and
survived!). This will occur on Friday Feb. 1,
if convenient for everyone, and will be at my
home. Ill distribute maps, and we can
carpool. Bring a date(s) and/or friend(s)!
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Modern Physics has very some unintuitive ideas.
In fact, this course will hit you with more than
any other course youll ever take. The goal is
simply to expose you to them, and later courses
will cover them on more detail.
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Understanding the ideas of each lecture requires
the knowledge of the previous lectures.
If you keep up, you wont end up looking like
this the night before the quizzes!