Your instructor is Stefan Baessler. His office is in room 169 in the new wing of the physics building, his phone number is 243-1024, and his email is sfb5d@virginia.edu.

Office hours: Tuesday, Thursday, 4:30 pm - 5:30 pm, room 169

Your teaching assistant is Chung Ting (Marco) Ma. His office is in room 057, and his lab in room 054, in the new wing of the physics building. His email is ctm7sf@virginia.edu .

His office hours are Tuesday 11 am - noon, and Thursday 6-7 pm. During office hours, you can find him in the Physics Building in room 220, in person, or by phone (924-6592).

Course description

You are expected to achieve a quantitative understanding of the foundations of modern physics, and a working knowledge of the subject in solving practical problems.

We will cover:

- Theory of relativity

- Foundations of quantum mechanics

- Applications

The third part will show how the understanding of quantum mechanics and relativity lead to a revolution in our understanding of atomic physics, chemistry, solid states physics, nuclear and particle physics and cosmology. At the end of this document, you will find a table of contents with links to the relevant textbook chapters.

In the introductory physics courses you are supposed to have taken previously, you have gotten an overview about what is now called classical physics. Much of this was discovered until the end of the 19^th century. At that time, the young Max Planck was advised not to study physics, as “…in this field, almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few holes.” This turned out to be very wrong, and in our lecture we will encounter Planck (who did not listen to this advice) as one of the physicists who helped develop quantum physics. Classical physics is still useful in many applications, but it will turn out to be a limiting case of both quantum mechanics and relativity, while. In this lecture, we will go beyond these limitations, and we will learn in which way relativity and quantum physics is the basis of many other disciplines.

Course Materials

We will use the textbook of  P. A. Tipler and R. A. Llewellyn, Modern Physics, 6th ed., W. H. Freeman, NY, 2012, ISBN 1-4292-5078-X. Additional course materials will be posted on Collab.

For the quizzes, we use web-assign. You find a quick start guide at http://webassign.net/manual/student_guide/student_quick_start_guide.htm . Please sign up for webassign. Your class key is on Resources->WebAssignClassKey.txt (Sorry, cannot put that into the syllabus) . Please use your UVa email address acronym as your username; e.g., if I were to sign up as a student, I would use sfb5d .

A list of additional literature will be found on collab, in Resources->Textbooks.pdf. These books will be held at the Brown Science and Engineering Library in Clark Hall.

Grading policy

Your course grade will be computed in the following way:

Grades given as a percentage translate into a letter grade according to the following list:

Homework is due every Friday, at the beginning of the lecture. You are encouraged to work on homework problems in teams. Furthermore, you are encouraged to ask for help from the TA or the instructor. However, do not expect to be walked through the steps of the correct solution before submission. Also, merely copying a solution from somebody else is not permitted. I will not accept late homework, unless you ask for it in time, give a reason, and I have granted permission. The lowest homework score will be dropped for all students who fill in the course evaluation at the end of the semester.

Grading rubric for homework assignments and quantitative exam problems:

Here the principles required are the key concepts and equations that are needed for a correct solution. A plausible misidentification of principles occurs when you use a reasonable, but incorrect, approach. Execution encompasses the mathematical manipulations required to achieve the desired results. An implausible result is one with the wrong units, wrong limiting behavior, or an unrealistic numerical value.

Quizzes (WebAssign) have to be solved alone. You can use textbooks or notes, but no other sources. The lowest quiz score will be dropped. This does not include the first quiz which is not graded.

Class Honor Policy Statement: I trust every student in this course to fully comply with all of the provisions of the UVa honor system. Alleged honor violations brought to my attention may be forwarded to the Honor Committee. If, in my judgment, it is beyond a reasonable doubt that a student has committed an honor violation with regard to an exam, that student will receive an immediate grade of "F" for that exam, irrespective of any subsequent action taken by the Honor Committee.

Policies and useful tips

• You should be signed up for one of the discussion sections:
  • T 3:30 pm - 4:20 pm in Dell 1, room 105
  • W 2:00 pm - 2:50 pm in Dell 1, room 105
• The course's web site (grades, syllabus, resources, ...) should be on your UVa Collab account. If it doesn't appear there, let me know.
• Read related sections of the textbook and any reading assignment before each lecture.
• Do not hesitate to ask questions at any point. Make use of office hours.
• Show all your work in homework and exam problem solutions.
• Check that your computations include correct physical units, sensible orders of magnitude and the appropriate number of significant digits, usually no more than 3. Do not follow the bad practice in your textbook to show the units only in the last step.
• Attendance is not taken at lectures or problem sessions. However, students are responsible for all material taught and all announcements made therein. Graded quizzes may be given in problem sessions.
• Problem sessions are designed to help you practice the course material using exercises and short problems, so as to prepare you for homework and exam problems. In addition, we will cover more advanced topics from time to time, going beyond the text book. Note that some of the problems that were treated extensively during the problem sessions can constitute exam material.
• The course grade will be no worse than C- if the final grade is no worse than C-.

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