This page is obsolete. To see Scales' wikis go to here and clock on course wikis.
To get the current info on 320, find out who's teaching it currently.
Course Information
Instructor: John Scales. MH 339. jscales@mines.edu.
TA: Jared Peacock. MH 339. jpeacock@mines.edu
- Office hours (subject to change, so always look here for the current schedule):
Monday: 9-10
Tuesday: 2:30-3:30
Thursday: 2-3
- In addition, there will be a weekly help session on Tuesday Morning at 8:00 in a room TBD.
- You're welcome to come to my office any time. The door is almost always open. If I'm not there, likely Jared will be, or Dr. Brian Zadler. If you need to talk and can't find me, just send me an email: jscales@mines.edu.
- There will be weekly homeworks, three one-hour exams throughout the semester and a two hour final. Each of these components will count for one-third of your grade: i.e., 1/3 HW, 1/3 hourlies, 1/3 final. The grading scale will be: 90 and above, A. 80-89, B. 70-79 C. 55-69 D.
- Homeworks will be assigned on Wednesdays and due on the Thursday 8 days later. You must turn the HW's in to Jared Peacock, who is the TA for this class. You can do that by 1) handing them to Jared, 2) putting them in his mailbox in the Physics Office, or 3) putting them in the "in-box" on our door (MH 339).
- With rare exceptions, I will post the day's lecture notes immediately after class. Hence, if you miss class, I expect you get whatever information you need from the wiki or from your classmates.
- Finally, note that this is a 4 credit hour course. Hence classes are 65 minutes long. This makes for a long session. I'll do what I can to break things up. In particular, I try to include some diversion at the end, frequently an application of quantum mechanics from the current research literature.
Here is a link to Amazon for the new book for 2008
Tentative Exam Schedule:
Exam 1, February 6. Exam 2, March 5. Exam 3, April 9. All these will be nominally 1 hour exams but you will have
more time than that and they will be in MH 220. Exams will be closed book except that you will be allowed to bring
a one page cheat sheet. These dates are all Wednesdays, by the way.
2008 Course Material
- Homework 1. Chapter 1 in Griffiths. Read section 1.1 on the Schrödinger equation. 1.1 and 1.2 are fundamental but hard, we will come back to these ideas later, but it's a good overview of some modern ideas. Do problems 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 on page 12. Do problems 1.4 and 1.5 on page 14. These will be due on Thursday January 17 at the end of the day.
Since not all of you may have the book yet, for this first homework, I have scanned the relevant pages.
here is the link to the pdf file. You must have the book though, so if you have not ordered it or bought from the bookstore, please do so ASAP.
- Homework 2. Chapter 1. 1.6,1.7,1.8, 1.10, 1.14. Due Thursday 1/24/08 at the end of the day.
- Homework 3 Chapter 2. 2.1b, 2.1c, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.6,2.8. Due Thursday January 31st at the end of the day.
- Homework 4 Chapter 2. 2.18, 2.19, 2.21, 2.22. Due Tuesday February 19 at 17:00.
- Homework 5 Chapter 2. 2.26, 2.29, 2.31, 2.33. Due Thursday February 28 at 17:00.
- Homework 6 Chapter 3. 3.11, 3.12, 3.15, Read 3.5.1 then do 3.14, 3.21,3.22. Due Friday March 28 at 17:00.
- Homework 7 Chapter 4. 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.8, 4.9, 4.13. Due Friday April 11 at 17:00.
- Homework 8 Chapter 4. 4.27, 4.31, 4.35, 4.36, 4.47. Due Thursday, May 1 at 17:00.
lecture notes by week
week of 1/11/08
week of 1/14/08
If you've forgotten your Fourier Series, please review this before we start Chapter 2.
week of 1/21/08
week of 1/28/08
2/8/08
week of 2/11/08
week of 2/18/08
week of 2/25/08
Sample questions for exam 2
week of 3/3/08
week of 3/17/08
week of 3/24/08
week of 3/31/08
week of 4/7/08
week of 4/14/08
week of 4/21/08
week of 4/28/08
Divertimenti
2/26/06 Millimeter Waves
3/1/06 The Wacky World of Quantum Computing
3/3/06 Applications of Quantum Tunneling
3/6/06 amazingly beautiful experiments on quantum computing using Josephson junctions and microwave circuits.
3/15/06 quantum well heterostructures, photonic crystals heterostructure laser diodes
3/29/06 measuring the spring constant of a single polymer chain
Course Downloads
Course Links
Scales' web page
TICC Course Forum
PhET (A CU website with many excellent demos for physics.)
Jerry Gilfoyle's very nice Mathematica notebooks on QM