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

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

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

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

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

Monday, Feb. 16 — Reading: Do as much reading in Chapter III-6 as you need to do the problem set (the tables at the end summarize all that Feynman derives) — 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)
Thursday, Feb. 19 — Reading: Chapter III-7 — NB: The only thing you really have to know about relativity is what I quickly derived, which is (a) the relativistic generalization of Newtonian kinetic energy is mγc² and (b) the relativistic generalization of Newtonian momentum is p=mγv, (c) γ is a factor that appears when dt/dτ comes out of the relativistic generalization of the time derivative, and (d) you should easily be able to use approximations for γ to recover the usual Newtonian expressions — Problem Set 11: There is only one big problem for this chapter, and we will complete it for the next class, along with some related problems

Monday, Feb. 23 — Reading: Consolidate Chapter III-7 — Problem Set 11: Do the one big problem for this chapter, and the additional problems in Handout and Problems to go with Chapter 7
Thursday, Feb. 26 — Reading: Start Feynman III-8 (you will finish after the break) — You can get started on problem Set 12, the zeroth problem of which will be Another Fourier Problem, and the remaining three problems will be Feynman’s three problems for Chapter III-8 (but none of this will be due until Monday, Mar. 16th)