| Physics 340 Vibrations, Waves, Light, and Heat | ||
| Oscillations: Free and Damped | ||
| W | Sept 3 | Intro: Vibrations and Waves |
| F | Sept 5 | The Harmonic Oscillator |
| M | Sept 8 | SHO as projection of circular motion, Complex representation |
| W | Sept 10 | Superposition of two oscillations: phasor and complex representations |
| F | Sept 12 | Energy of oscillators, potential wells, small angle approximation, examples of SHO |
| M | Sept 15 | Damped Oscillators I. SHO with dashpot |
| W | Sept 17 | Damped Oscillators II: LRC circuit, Q |
| Oscillations: Driven and Coupled | ||
| F | Sept 19 | Driven Oscillators I |
| M | Sept 22 | Driven Oscillators II: the power resonance curve, the driven LCR circuit |
| W | Sept 24 | Coupled Oscillators: 2 masses with springs, normal modes |
| F | Sept 26 | Coupled Oscillators in continuous systems, waves on a string |
| Standing Waves, the Fourier Sum | ||
| M | Sept 29 | Normal Modes on String |
| W | Oct 1 | Longitudinal Waves, Wave Equation |
| F | Oct 3 | Sound waves, Normal Modes in a Pipe |
| M | Oct 6 | Waves on a membrane: 2D normal modes |
| W | Oct 8 | Fourier Series |
| F | Oct 10 | Exam I |
| M | Oct 13 | Study Break No Class |
| Waves: Travelling, Reflecting, Confined | ||
| W | Oct 15 | Travelling Waves I: The Wave Equation on a String, Solutions |
| F | Oct 17 | Longitudinal Waves, Plane Waves, Intensity and the Decibel |
| M | Oct 20 | Superposition of Travelling Waves, Group velocity |
| W | Oct 22 | Fourier Transform, bandwidth theoremt |
| F | Oct 24 | Reflection at boundary, impedence; the 3 D plane wave |
| M | Oct 27 | Spherical Waves, Doppler Effects |
| W | Oct 29 | Discussion |
| Electromagnetic Waves | ||
| F | Oct 31 | EM Waves, the speed of light |
| M | Nov 3 | EM waves: energy, intensity, Poynting vector, momentum density |
| W | Nov 5 | EM waves and conductors, reflection, dispersion |
| F | Nov 7 | Polarization, Dielectric media, Reflection and Transmission at Dielectric Boundaries |
| M | Nov 10 | Discussion |
| W | Nov 12 | Radiation from accelerated charges, J.J. Thompson construction of Dipole radiation |
| F | Nov 14 | Exam II |
| M | Nov 17 | Dipole radiation pattern, Larmor Formula, Rayleigh scattering, Blue sky |
| Interference and Diffraction | ||
| W | Nov 19 | Young's experiment, 2slit, thin films |
| F | Nov 21 | Interference with many sources |
| M | Nov 24 | Discussion |
| W | Nov 26 | Fraunhofer Diffraction |
| F | Nov 28 | Thanksgiving Holiday No Class |
| Special Relativity | ||
| M | Dec 1 | Speed of light, Origins of Relativity |
| W | Dec 3 | Time dilation, length contraction, Lorentz transformations |
| F | Dec 5 | Addition of velocities, Relativistic Dynamics |
| M | Dec 8 | Discussion |
| W | Dec 10 | Wave Mechanics |