Updates:

• 6/17/13   Welcome to the skeleton web site for Physics 227. Many links do not yet work, but this should give you the basic information you need. You can also see what happened in detail in this class last year here, including daily lecture notes. Please note that some of the information below is tentative (e.g. on the times of quizzes and HW due dates) and may change.

  This year we have a fifth (Friday) session each week. This will not be used for lecturing, but rather for "office" hours with a TA or me, and possibly some tutorial time on Mathematica. If you have a conflict with the Friday time, you can still take this class without problems.

  I will use the computer mathematics program Mathematica to do some in-class demos, and will also ask some HW problems which require the use of a computer mathematics program. If you already know one (e.g. MatLab, Maple or Python) then you don't need to learn Mathematica. I have some information about getting the program and on some tutorials below.

  I have been asked by a few students what they can best do now to prepare for the class. I think reading through some of the relevant chapters of the text would be useful. Which chapters to read can be determined from last year's syllabus , which I will follow fairly closely. Also, if you are not familiar with a computer mathematics program, learning one would be a very good investment (not just for this class, but for all subsequent physics classes). If you are very keen, then start doing the problems!

Index

Office hours and contact information

• Prof. Steve Sharpe   srsharpe@uw.edu   B406 PAB  685-2395
• Office hours: TBA
• TAs: TBA

Texts

• Our required text is:
  "Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences," (3rd Edition, Wiley) by Mary L. Boas.

  We will follow the ordering of material in this text, and draw most homework questions from it. Corrections to the text are available here. Note that solutions to some problems appear at the back of the book (and there is a companion volume to the previous edition which contains solutions to approximately 1/4 of the exercises, many of which are the unchanged in the current edition).

Course Organization

• This course, together with the subsequent PHYS 228, aims to provide you with the mathematical tools needed to master physics at the UG level and, to a significant extent, at the first-year graduate level too. We will cover a lot of material, with some of which you may have some prior experience, but most of which is likely to be new, or at least applied in a new way. We will move quite fast, and it is imperative that you are organized and stay on top of the material. This means practice, practice and more practice. Weekly homeworks provide a minimal level of practice, and will include suggestions for additional problems not to be turned in. Weekly quizzes provide incentive to stay on track.

  Basic use of computer mathematics programs is an integral part of this course, including some parts of lectures and some homework questions. You may use Mathematica, Maple , Matlab or Python. Mathematica is available on all the PCs in PAB B101 and the study center AM018. In addition, students can now install Mathematica on their personally owned computers at no cost. See here or here for information about obtaining it, Brief instructions on getting started with Mathematica are here.

  I keep a log of what has been covered, together with my lecture notes, on the daily coverage page. This will also indicate any material not covered in lecture that you should read. Last year's log will give you a fairly detailed idea of what lies ahead.

• Holidays.
  • There will be no classes on Veteran's day (Monday, Nov. 11th), or the Thanksgiving holiday (Thursday-Friday, Nov. 28th-29th).
• Homework.
  • There will be weekly homework sets (starting in the second week), due date to be determined. I will bring a box to class; they can also be placed in my mailbox in the physics office (but only until 12) or under my office door (until 12:30).
  • Each HW set will cover the material discussed in class the previous week (as well as any extra assigned reading).
  • You are encouraged to discuss the assignments with classmates, but the solutions you turn in must be your own work.
  • Working on assignments in a timely fashion is a crucial part of the learning process. Late assignments will only be accepted by prearrangement, and only under exceptional circumstances.
  • Solutions will be posted on the HW link after class on Tuesdays.
  • Selected problems from each HW will be graded.
  • Regrade requests must be made by the end of the class session following that in which the HWs are returned, and must be made in writing on separate sheet of paper which is attached to the HW. There should be no additional writing on the HW itself.
• Quizzes.
  • There will be weekly quizzes in class on a day to be determined.
  • I may have a quiz in the first week ("quiz0") but this will concern background material and not be graded.
  • Starting in the second week, quizzes will concern the material discussed in class the previous week (as well as any extra assigned reading), and thus will be based on the same material as the HWs turned in the previous day.
  • I expect the quizzes to take 20 minutes.
  • Regrade requests for quizzes follow the same procedure as for HWs.

Exams

• There will be two midterms and a final exam.
• The midterm schedule is TBD.
• The final exam is on Monday, December 9th from 8:30-10:20pm in A118.
• If you have to miss an exam due to a UW sponsored activity (e.g. travelling for a sports team) please contact me ASAP.
• Exam rules will be discussed in class and posted on this web page closer to the exams.
• I hope to spend part of the lecture period prior to each exam on a review.

Course Grade

• First note that to pass the course, you must take at least one of the midterms and the final .

  The course grade will be determined by scores on quizzes, homeworks and exams as follows. The homeworks will count for ~10% (the "~" indicating that, since this is the first time I have taught this class, I may make some minor adjustments to the weight given to the homeworks). I will drop the lowest homework score in determining the overall sum, so that you can miss one homework without penalty. The remaining ~90% will be determined in equal part by the quizzes (with the lowest quiz score dropped), the two midterms and the final, except that the final will count double and that the lowest score will dropped. If the final is the lowest score then only half of its score will be dropped.

  This policy means that you are not penalized if, e.g. for personal reasons, you miss a midterm. This allows me to enforce the policy that there are no makeup exams.

Useful links

• Professor Steve Ellis's notes for PHYS 227 from Autumn 2008.
• Particle Theory at the UW , and my web page .