Black Holes

Course home page

See also: Daily Schedule Term 2

Daily Schedule Term 3

Week 8 — Relativistic Momentum and Energy

• Monday, Oct. 28 — No class (last day of Term 2-3 break)
• Thursday, Oct. 31 — Continue your study of Chapter 7 of Spacetime Physics to the end of Section 7.5, p. 206 — Problem Set 8, with due date delayed to the beginning of this Thursday’s class, is here

Week 9 — Start Exploring Black Holes — Spherical Polar Coordinates — Reduced Radius — Schwarzschild Metric

• Monday, Nov. 4 — Study Chapter 1 of Exploring Black Holes through Section 1-7, p. 1-13 — Problem Set 9 is here and in your file folders and two groups of you have volunteered for presentations as noted in the problem set — Discussion of the Principle of Extremal Aging — Spherical polar coordinates — The “reduced” radius
• Thursday, Nov. 7 — Study Chapter 2 of Exploring Black Holes through p. 2-20 — Problem Set 10 is here and in your file folders and a group (consisting of Eden and Sasha) will present the full Black Hole Company Construction Problem

Week 10 — Finish Introducing the Schwarzschild Metric

• Monday, Nov. 11 — Problem Set 11 is here and in your file folders — Finish reading Chapter 2 — We discussed the relation between E, p, h, λ, and ν for photons, and contrasted it with the relation between E, p, and m for massive particles* — Presentation: Walker and Rebecca, the Zeno’s Paradox problem
• Thursday, Nov. 14 — Problem Set 12 is here and in your file folders — No new reading assignment (just continue to consolidate your understanding of Chapter 2) — Presentation: Eli and Eden, the Chesapeake Bay problem

Week 11 — Exam 2 — Start Plunging

• Monday, Nov. 18 — Exam 2 covering everything from Chapter 4 to Section 7.5 of Spacetime Physics, and Chapters 1 and 2 of Exploring Black Holes
• Thursday, Nov. 21 — Study Chapter 3 through Section 3-6 (through p. 3-18) — We need two groups of two presenters from among those that didn’t present the last two times, so that would be Jeremy, Kel, Rania, and Sasha — The two topics I can imagine being good to present are Sample Problem 2 (p. 3-22) and Sample Problem 3 (p. 3-25) — Problem Set 13 is here and in your file folders

Week 12 — Finish Plunging — Start Rain Coordinates

• Monday, Nov. 25 — Finish your study of Chapter 3 (pp. 3-19 to 3-26) and then continue to page B-13 of Chapter B — Problem Set 14 is here and in your file folders
• Thursday, Nov. 28 — No class - Shakespeare Festival

Week 13 — Finish Rain Coordinates — Start Orbiting

• Monday, Dec. 2 — Finish Rain Coordinates — Rebecca requested we read the material referenced at the end of Problem 6 on p. 3-30 of Exploring Black Holes — Specifically, the material referenced was pp. 422-448 of Black Holes and Time Warps, by Kip Thorne — Also read the remainder of Chapter B of Exploring Black Holes for Monday — Problem Set 15 for Monday (that does nothing more than flesh out the readings a bit) is here and in your file folders
• Thursday, Dec. 5 — Start Orbiting — Study Chapter 4 of Exploring Black Holes through Section 4-5 (just through p. 4-10) — For Problem Set 16 do Problems 1 and 2 on. p. 4-28 — In class derived the relativistic version of angular momentum conservation — And we did a lightning derivation of the Newtonian effective potential for motion in a spherically symmetric potential

Week 14 — Finish Orbiting

• Monday, Dec. 9 — Continue your study Chapter 4 of Exploring Black Holes through Section 4-7 (through p. 4-20) — For Problem Set 17 do Problems 3 and 4 on. p. 4-29 and 4-30 — We derived Eq. 30 on p. 4-15 and did Problem 6 on p. 4-31 in class, and that concludes our study of Chapter 4
• Thursday, Dec. 12 — Study Sections 5-1 to 5-5 of Chapter 5 (through p. 5-10) — For Problem Set 18 do Problem 5 on p. 5-33 (you can use Eq. 25 from Section 5-6 blindly) — We will do a complete derivation of Eq. 25 in Section 5-6 (the effective potential for light) and work through some of the consequences pictured in Section 5-7

Week 15 — Exam 3 — Cosmology

• Monday, Dec. 16 — Exam 3 — Covering Exploring Black Holes Chapters 3, B, and 4
• Thursday, Dec. 19 — Cosmology — In 1998, by studying distant supernova, it was determined that the universe is accelerating (expanding faster now than in the past) — All the way back in 1917, Einstein had introduced a ”cosmological constant” term that has the effect of causing the universe to expand — Quantum field theorists interpret the cosmological constant as the “vacuum energy density” and cosmologists refer to the same thing the “dark energy” — In our final class, we will introduce the metric of the universe (the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker metric), explore its solutions, and close with the experimental evidence that the universe contains dark energy — Buckle up for Cosmology - WRITING UP WHAT I COVERED IN THE LAST CLASS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS

This course would have been nothing without the clarity and brilliance of John Archibald Wheeler 1911-2008 and the precious textbooks in which he shared his insights.

Einstein, Yukawa, Wheeler, and Bohr