About the course - General

    Topic outline

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  • “I understand what an equation means if I have a way of figuring out the characteristics of its solution without actually solving it” (P. Dirac, quoted by R. Feynman in his lectures)



    Week Topic Class notes
    		 Lecture notes
    		 Extra & material
    1 Order of magnitude physics
    		Lec1Intro1, Intro2 scales
    2 Elasticity
    3 Elasticity, Fluid dynamics  
     4  Fluid dynamics
    		 
    5
    		 Waves
    		 
    6 Atoms
    		 
    7 Atoms, molecules, materials properties  
    8 Applying extreme cases  
    9 Random walk and all that  
    10 Quantum processes1  
    11 Quantum processes 2
    Special relativity


    		 
    12 Boson exchange

    		 
    13 Standard model

    		 

      1. “Order-of-Magnitude Physics”, by P. Goldreich, S. Mahajan, S. Phinney.  University of Cambridge (1999).
      2. “Search for Simplicity”. A series of papers by V.Weisskopf, Am.J.Phys. 1984-1986
      3. “Street-fighting mathematics: the art of educated guessing and opportunistic problem solving”, by S. Mahajan (MIT, 2010).
      4. “How many licks? Or, how to estimate damn near anything”, by Aaron Santos, Running press (2009)
      5. "Fly by night physics", by A.Zee, Princeton University Press (2020)

      • Office hours

        Name Day Hours Building/Room E-mail
        Uri Keshet
        Oleg Krichevsky
        Yuri Lyubarsky        		 By appointment - XX/YY


        Lecture/Tutorial

        Group What? Name Day Hours Building/Room
        1 Lecture Keshet, Krichevsky,
        Lyubarsky        		 Sunday 14:00-17:0054/207



          • Homework: A weekly problem set. Non-trivial problems.
            Final exam: Strongly based on homework and class material.
            Final grade: 80% exam, 20% homework.