Modern Physics I

Catalog description

Introductory material, 2-slit experiment, matter waves and addition of amplitudes.Superposition principle, Uncertainty principle, properties of matter waves. Boundary conditions and energy level quantization and Schrodinger interpretation. Wave equation, application to one-dimensional problems, barrier penetration, Bloch states in solids and how bands form in solids. The universality of the harmonic oscillator potential, simple harmonic oscillator and applications. One-electron atoms, spin, transition rates. Identical particles and quantum statistics. Beyond the Schrodinger equation: variational methods and WKB. (required for Physics majors)