Time Schedule:
David Thouless
PHYS 224
Seattle Campus
Introduction to heat, thermodynamics, elementary kinetic theory, and the physics of continuous media. Prerequisite: MATH 126, MATH 129, or MATH 136, any of which may be taken concurrently; PHYS 122 which may be taken concurrently. Offered: AWSpS.
Class description
I hope to help you understand an important aspect of the physical world, and help you to learn how physicists think about such problems. There will be demands for problem solving, and for clear written answers to questions. I will include some historical background because I think it is important to be aware where our understanding comes from.
Student learning goals
Students have their own learning goals. If you want to do well in MCAT, get a 2.0 to satisfy graduation requirements, or a 4.0 to impress a top law school I will try to give you help if you ask me. I hope you will also pay some attention to my list of teaching goals, and include some of them in your own learning goals. I am here to help you to study and to learn.
I hope that students will acquire a clear understanding of the concepts of density, pressure, temperature, heat, heat capacity, internal energy, entropy, and free energy.
I will also emphasize how heat travels, what is the meaning of an equation of state, and what happens in changes between different phases, asking you to pay attention to practical implications.
I want students to be able to understand these concepts from different points of view, macroscopic (hydrostatics and thermodynamics) and microscopic (molecular and kinetic theory), and to apply them in their work on problems and, much more importantly, in their thoughts about the real world. Integration of knowledge is a good goal.
I want to give students practice in understanding mathematics that they are supposed to have learned or be learning, such as partial derivatives, and, if they are not already familiar with it, to get some familiarity with the use of probabilistic reasoning.
I hope that students will think about the wider context of science. How knowledge is acquired, how consensus is reached, and what bearing this particular branch of science has on current issues.
General method of instruction
There will be three lectures a week, and a voluntary problems class. Reading will be assigned, both from the text-books and notes, and students will be expected to familiar with the reading before the class. Working on problems and discussion of them is an essential part of the loearning process. As there is no laboratory course there will be lecture demonstrations.
Recommended preparation
Make sure you do some preliminary reading for the classes, and work on the problems. If you find that I am calling on knowledgethat you do not have, ask me about it. Be prepared to participatein class discussions.
Class assignments and grading
Approximately 8 homework assignments will be handed out. Solution sets will be available one week later. Do not restrict your attention just to the graded problems, as thinking about problems is an essential part of studying. The ungraded problems may be corrected if you hand them in.
I will assign some open-ended questions both in the problem sets and in the exams, as a reminder that learning to do short problems is not the main aim of the course.
There will usually be a ten-minute text of the previous week's material at the beginning of the Monday class
Some homework problems will be graded, and there will be ten minute tests on Mondays. There will be one midterm examination and a final examination. The Final Examination will be on Monday, June 5, 8:30-10:20 am, in the usual class-room. You will be expected to bring a calculator into examinations, and will be permitted to bring with you one 11in by 8.5in sheet of notes and reminders with you.
The homework and short tests will count for one unit in the grading scheme, each midterm will count for one unit, and the final will count for two units. The lowest score (after normalization) of the four units for each student willbe dropped.
