Week 1 — Introduction to Quantum-Mechanical Interference — Introduction to Complex Variables

• Monday, Jan. 12 — Reading: Churchill, Brown & Verhey (hereafter, just “CBV”), Sections 1 and 2 of Chapter 1; Feynman, Volume III Chapter 1 — Problem Set 1: All the evens in the CBV reading
• Thursday, Jan. 15 — Reading: CBV, Sections 3 and 4 of Chapter 1; Feynman, Chapter III-2 — Problem Set 2: All the evens, in the CBV reading; Feynman 27.12, 27.14 and 27.21

Week 2 — Mathematics of Classical and Quantum-Mechanical Wave Interference and Diffraction

• Monday, Jan. 19 — Reading: CBV, Sections 5 and 6 of Chapter 1; Start Feynman, Chapter I-29 and part of I-30 — Problem Set 3: All the evens the CBV reading
• Thursday, Jan. 22 — Feynman, Conclude Chapter I-29 and part of I-30 — Problem Set 4: Feynman Problem 21.1; Derive the actual function of angle (not just the location of nodes and anti-nodes) for all the situations Feynman detailed in Chapter I-29; Feynman Problems 21.4, 21.5, and 21.6

Week 3 — Notation and Rules for Combining Quantum-Mechanical Probability Amplitudes

• Monday, Jan. 26 — Reading: Continue Feynman through III-3-2 (through means up to and including) — Problem Set 5: Wolfson, Chapter 14, Problems #24 and #46, Feynman Problems 27.6, 27.7, and 27.20, and my Gaussian problem
• Thursday, Jan. 29 — Reading: Finish Chapter III-3 — Problem Set 6: 1. Just for practice with the notation, write out Eq. 3.6 and the un-numbered equation that precedes it for the case where the first screen contains three slits, 1, 2, and 3, and the second screen contains two slits, a and b, and don’t use ellipses, write all 6 terms out; 2. Do my handout; 3. 70.1; 4. 70.2; 5. 70.6; 6. 70.8

Week 4 — Exam 1 — Bose-Einstein Statistics

• Monday, Feb. 2 — Exam 1 on CBV, Chapter 1, Wolfson, Chapter 14, and Feynman, Chapters I-29, I-30, III-1, III-2, and III-3 (glossing the Bohr atom, the Uncertainty Principle, and Feynman’s emphasis on crystal diffraction patterns, even though the latter are experimentally and scientifically extremely important for discovering the lattice structure of crystals)
• Thursday, Feb. 5 — Reading: Feynman Chapter III-4 through Section III-4-4 — Review Section III-3-4 where identical particles were first introduced — Problem Set 7: 1. Exam Problem 4; 2. Exam Extra Credit Problem 6

Week 5 — Black-Body Radiation — Fermi-Dirac Statistics — Spin 1 Systems

• Monday, Feb. 9 — Reading: Finish Feynman Chapter III-4 — Problem Set 8: 1. 71.1; 2. 71.2; 3. 71.4; 4. 71.7; 5. 71.12 (hard but very worthwhile, and take a look at 71.13 if you want to know why it is so worthwhile)
• Thursday, Feb. 12 — Reading: All of Feynman Chapter III-5, and the supporting material from II-35 (up to but not including Rabi’s method) — Prolem Set 9: 0.(a) Derive the angular momentum of a spinning sphere from first principles (the definition of angular momentum) and 0.(b) Derive the magnetic moment of a charged spinning disk, starting from the first princples (the definition of magnetic moment); Problems 1-4 are all four of Feynman’s problems that go with Chapter III-5

Week 6 — Spin 1/2 Systems — Time-Dependence

• Monday, Feb. 16 — Reading: Do as much reading in Chapter III-6 as you need to do the problem set (about half the chapter?) — Problem Set 10: 0. Prove using the formulas given in Section 5-7, what is claimed in the last paragraph of the section; Problems 1-3 are the first three of Feynman’s problems that go with Chapter III-6; As Problem 4, redo the last problem on the previous problem set if you misinterpreted it (look briefly at the first few sentences of my solution to understand the intended interpretation)