Physics 102 - Spring 2014- University of Rochester
Visions of the Multiverse
News Important links Prestentations Contact info Lectures Problem sets Solution sets Recitations Reading
spiral galaxy in Andromeda, rollover is Scott Adams' take on the multiverse
Welcome to Physics 102.
Ponder this:
"22,000 days. It's not a lot. It's all you got. 22,000 days."
- The Moody Blues , in Long Distance Voyager released in 1981"Understanding is a lot like sex. It's got a practical purpose, but that's not why people do it normally."
- Frank Oppenheimer
Sir Isaac Newton
Listen to the ballad of Sir Isaac Newton (found here). Our man Isaac invented much of the basic physics background we'll discuss. Before that he did backup vocals for Bon Jovi.
A few potentially useful links:
The physics classroom (online tutorial on mechanics)
Fear of physics - another online site with visuals that can help you make sense of some things
Bored? Check these out (trust me ... these are cool even if you aren't into physics):
FSU magnet lab powers of ten ... perspectives on size scales.
Steve Manly, Department of Physics and Astronomy
reach via email: steven.manly@rochester.edu
reach via phone: 585-275-8473
reach via feet: B&L 203E
Manly's office hours: Monday 11 am-noon and Wednesday 9-10 am. If that doesn't work get in touch with me for an appointment ... feel free to drop by without an appt. with the understanding that I might in the middle of something else and need to set up a better time to meet.
Recitation leaders:
Christina Loniewski, cloniews@u.rochester.edu
Inga Koch, ikoch@rochester.edu
Recitation times:
Wednesday 4:50-6:50, Mel 206
Wednesday 7:40-9:40, Dewey 4162
Reading and writing assignments:
Writing assignment 1 due by Monday, January 20
Writing assignment 2 due by Monday, January 27
Writing assignment 3 due Monday, February 3
Writing assignment 4 due Monday, February 10
Writing assignment 5 due Monday, February 17
Writing assignment 6 due Monday, February 24
Writing assignment 7 due Monday, March 3
Writing assignment 8 due Monday, March 24
Writing assignment 9 due Monday, March 31
Writing assignment 10 due Monday, April 7
Writing assignment 11 due Monday, April 14
Writing assignment 12 due Monday, April 21
Writing assignment 13 due Monday, April 28
Reading for week of January 15:
Reading in Hobson – Chapter 1 (p. 2-30) and sections 2.4 and 2.5 (p. 40-44)
Read chapter on "The Nature of Science" in Science for All Americans online (from the American Association for the Advancement of Science) at http://www.project2061.org/publications/sfaa/online/chap1.htm
Read Intro, Chapter 1, Appendix A, and Appendix B of Visions of the Multiverse.Reading for week of January 20:
Reading in Hobson – Chapter 3 (p. 54-66).
Read Intro, Chapter 2 of Visions of the Multiverse.
Read "God vs. Science" from Time Magazine (Nov. 2006).
Read "Science and religion - Albert Einstein".
Read M. Singham, "The Copernican Myths." This is available on BlackBoard.Reading for week of January 27:
Reading in Hobson – Chapter 4
Read/look over the section on Newton's Laws on the HowStuffWorks website at http://science.howstuffworks.com/newton-law-of-motion.htm
Take a quick look at the bio of Eugene Wigner in Wikipedia
Read "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" by Eugene Wigner
Read "The Reasonable Ineffectiveness of Mathematics" by Derek Abbott (find this in BlackBoard)Reading for week of February 3:
Reading in Hobson –Chapter 5.1 and 5.2 and Chapter 10
Read Chapter 3 of Visions of the Multiverse
Watch Youtube video on relativity by Eugene Khutoryansky - I have a couple of pedagogical beefs with this, but most of it is really quite well done.
Read this online biography of Albert EinsteinReading for week of February 10:
Reading in Hobson – Chapter 8.1, 8.4 through 8.6, Chapter 9
Read through Nick Strobel's Astronomy Notes section on electromagnetic radiation at
http://www.astronomynotes.com/light/chindex.htm
Read Nick Bostrom's "Are We Living in a Computer Simulation" found in BlackBoard
Read John Barrow's "Living in a Simulated Universe" found in BlackBoardReading for week of February 17:
Reading in Hobson - section 8.8 "force fields"
Read section on how light works in the "HowStuffWorks" website
Read lessons 1, 2, 3 on light waves and color on "The Physics Classroom" website
Read New York Times article from 1901 entitled "Wireless Signals Across Ocean" found in BlackBoard
Read New York Times article from 1943 entitled "Radar" found on BlackBoard
Read New York Times article from 2000 entited "Art Plus Physics Equals Beautiful Music" found on BlackBoard
Read Wikipedia article on James Clerk Maxwell
Read brief article on "who was James Clerk Maxwell" on the clerkmaxwellfoundation websiteReading for week of February 24:
Reading in Hobson - Chapter 2 (already read sections 2.4 and 2.5) and Chapter 13 entitled "The Quantum Idea"
Read chapter 4 in Visions of the Multiverse
Read Michael Weimer's "A short history of quantum mechanics: 1900-1928" found in BlackBoard
Read NY Times article from 1923 entitled "Discusses Atom From New Point" (in BlackBoard)
Read NY Times article from 1930 entitled "Tests of the Electron Indicate it is a Wave" (in BlackBoard)
Read Wikipedia discussion of Einstein's Annus Mirabilis papers published in 1905
You might have fun downloading and looking through English versions of his Annus Mirabilis papers (download them from the Library of Congress here)
Check out the following articles on the about.com physics website:
http://physics.about.com/od/quantumphysics/a/blackbody.htm
http://physics.about.com/od/quantumphysics/a/photoelectric.htm
http://physics.about.com/od/lightoptics/a/waveparticle.htm
http://physics.about.com/od/quantumphysics/a/dbhypothesis.htmReading for week of March 3:
Reading in Hobson - Chapter 14 entitled "The Quantum Universe"
Read NY Times article from 1935 entitled "Bohr and Einstein at Odds" (in Blackboard)
Spend a few minutes looking over the very different characteristics of the elements in this interactive periodic chart . Learn about your favorite elements. one thing that's fun to do is to select elements in the group 1 column (very reactive chemically) and check out the videos of these elements reacting with water.
Check out this Youtube video on quantum mechanics http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KN6a8inOF8
Read the HowStuffWorks article on quantum mechanics at http://science.howstuffworks.com/quantum-suicide.htm
Read article by Byrne entitled "The Many Worlds of Hugh" found in BlackboardReading for week of March 17:
Read Visions of the Multiverse chapter 5
Read chapters 15 and 16 in Hobson entitled "The nucleus and radioactivity" and "Fusion and fission"
Read NY Times article from 2000 entitled "Quantum Theory Tugged and All Physics Unraveled" found in BlackBoard
Here is some reading on what I call the (non-scientific) multiverse of wishful thinking:
Wikipedia article on the Law of Attraction
An "ezine article" on the law of attraction and quantum physics
Wikipedia article on The Secret
Wikipedia article on What the Bleep do we Know
A bit of a critique of What the Bleep do we Know from the Australian Broadcasting Corp.Reading for week of March 24:
Read chapters 17 and 18 in Hobson entitled "The energy challenge" and "Quantum Fields: Relativity meets the quantum"
Read the the Science News article "The Status Quark" by Siegfried found in your reading folder on BlackBoard
Check out the LHC rap video on youtube
Check out the Fermilab "Accelerating Science" video - a bit less happening than the LHC video, but more informative
Look over the Inquiring Minds section of the Fermilab website
Spend some time looking at the particle adventure
Read a few New York Times articles discussing advances in particle physics - all of these can be found in BlackBoard:
NYT - 1967 - Two Men in Search of the Quark,
NYT - 1994 - Top Quark, Last Piece in Puzzle of Matter,
NYT - 1998 - Mass Found In Elusive Particle, Universe May Never be the Same,
NYT - 2007 - A Giant Takes on Physics' Biggest Questions
NYT - 2012 - Physicists Find Elusive Particle Seen as Key to UniverseReading for week of March 31:
Read chapter 11 in Hobson (entitled "The General Theory of Relativity and the New Cosmology")
Read chapter 6 in Visions of the Multiverse
Astronomy magazine article entitled "How the Big Bang Forged the First Elements" by UR's own Adam Frank (found in BlackBoard)
Scientific American article entitled "The Universe" by Michael Turner (Found in BlackBoard)
NYT - 2000 - In quantum feat, atom found in two places at once (on BlackBoard)Reading for week of April 7:
Read chapter 7 in Visions of the Multiverse
Astronomy magazine article entitled "Seeing the Dawn of Time" by Adam Frank (found in BlackBoard)
Scientific American article entitled "The Cosmic Symphony" by Wayne Hu and Martin White (found in BlackBoard)
Look over Wayne Hu's tutorial on the cosmic microwave background (CMB).Reading for week of April 14:
Read chapter 8 in Visions of the Multiverse
Check out the basics of string theory on the "Official String Theory Website" created by Patricia Schwarz
Discover magazine article entitled "Before the Big Bang" by Michael Lemonick ... (webpage is poor and link problematic, read it if you can see it. They have it designed so that I can't seem to extract it/print it.)
Scientific American article entitled "The String Theory Landscape" by Raphael Bousso and Joseph Polchinski (on BlackBoard)
Scientific American article entitled "The Inflation Debate" by Paul Steinhardt (on BlackBoard)
New York Times article from 1919 entitled Einstein Expounds on New Theory (on BlackBoard)
New York Times article from 1954 entitled Birth of Universe Traced to Blast (on BlackBoard)
New York Times article from 1965 entitled Signals Imply a "Big Bang" Universe (on BlackBoard)Reading for week of April 21:
Read chapter 9 in Visions of the Multiverse
Discover magazine article entitled "Is the Universe Really Made of Math?" by Adam Frank (interview with Max Tegmark) (also on BlackBoard)
"Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Us" - Victor Stenger (on BlackBoard)
New Scientist article "How to map the multiverse" by Anil Ananthaswami (on BlackBoard)
"Philosophy of the Multiverse" by Govert Schilling (on BlackBoard)
"Parallel Universes" - Max Tegmark - (on BlackBoard) This is an excellent overview of many multiverse ideas. I think chunks of this article are inaccessible and chunks are quite readable. Go through it and pick up what you can and don't worry about the places where he uses too much technical lingo.
New York Times article from 2001 entitled Before the Big Bang There was What (on BlackBoard)
New York Times article from 2002 entitled A New View of Our Universe, Only One of Many (on BlackBoard)
New York Times article from 2003 entitled Cosmos Sits for Early Portrait (on BlackBoard)
New York Times article from 2008 entitled Dark Perhaps Forever (on BlackBoard)
Applets (copyright UR and Truth & Beauty software)
Lect 1 - January 15, 2014 - Intro to course, what is a universe, human bias (audio)
Lect 2 - January 22, 2014 - Watch Nova documenary "Universe or Multiverse"
Lect 3 - January 27, 2014 - human experience, nature of science/art/religion (audio)
Lect 4 - January 29, 2014 - kinematic variables, Newton's laws (audio)
Lect 5 - February 3, 2014 - relativity (batteries in recorder died, no audio, sorry)
Lect 6 - February 5, 2014 - relativity (audio)
Lect 7 - February 10, 2014 - fields, electromagnetism, start of waves (audio)
Lect 8 - February 12, 2014 - waves, electromagnetism (audio)
Lect 9 - February 17, 2014 - electromagnetic waves, blackbody radiation (audio)
Lect 10 - February 19, 2014 - blackbody radiation, photoelectric effect (audio)
Lect 11 - February 24, 2014 - de Broglie wavelength, Bohr model (audio)
Lect 12 - February 26, 2014 - Bohr model, Schrodinger equation, atoms (audio)
Lect 13 - March 3, 2014 - quantum mechanics, multi-electron atoms (audio)
Lect 14 - March 5, 2014 - Copenhagen interpretation of QM, many worlds multiverse, multiverse of wishful thinking (audio)
Lect 15 - March 17, 2014 - Uncertainty principle, nuclear physics (audio)
Lect 16 - March 19, 2014 - nuclear physics (audio)
Lect 17 - March 24, 2014 - Stars, beginning of particle physics (audio)
Lect 18 - March 26, 2014 - more particle physics, (audio)
Lect 19 - March 31, 2014 - end of particle physics, man's place in the cosmos (audio)
Lect 20 - April 2, 2014 - no lecture in Hoyt, instead watch online lecture for the public by Prof. Michael Turner, who is a fabulous astrophysicist/cosmologist at the University of Chicago. Prof. Turner's talk is entitled "Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and Inflation: the Big Mysteries of the Universe"
Lect 21 - April 7, 2014 - Big bang cosmology, (audio)
Lect 22 - April 9, 2014 - Problems with big bang cosmology, inflation, (audio)
Lect 23 - April 14, 2014 - Inflation, dark matter, dark energy, CMB (audio)
Lect 24 - April 16, 2014 - Cosmology, string theory (audio)
Lect 25 - April 21, 2014 - String theory, Tegmark's mathematical universe hypothesis (audio)
Lect 26 - April 23, 2014 - Summary of concepts leading to multiverse (audio)
Lect 27 - April 28, 2014 - Summary of concepts leading to multiverse (audio)
Lect 30 - April 30, 2014 - Summary of concepts leading to multiverse (audio)
Recitation 1 - for January 22
Recitation 2 - for January 29
Recitation 3 - for February 5
Recitation 4 - for February 12
Recitation 5 - for February 19
Recitation 6 - for February 26
Recitation 7 - for March 5
Recitation 8 - For March 19
Recitation 9, links for recitation 9 - for March 26
Recitation 10 - for April 2
Recitation 11 - for April 9
Recitation 12 - for April 16
Recitation 13 - for April 23