Ph 311/312 course details, last updated:
Jan. 9, 2023
Introduction to Modern Physics
these two courses are considered to be a
sequence, so it does not make sense to join PH 312 without proper preparation
by either PH 311 or some similar course taken somewhere else
Tu/Th 10:00 -11:50 am at KMC 405
Instructor: Peter Moeck, Dr. rer.
nat. (Crystallography), Professor of Physics, Office hours: room 404 in person, Science Research
and Teaching Center (SRTC, formerly Science Building II if you tell me in
advance), Tuesday and Thursday: 12.00 to 12:30 pm (or on zoom)
e-mail: pmoeck
at pdx dot edu, web: http://web.pdx.edu/~pmoeck/index.html
and http://nanocrystallography.research.pdx.edu/nano-crystallography-group/
telephone:
503 725 4227 (but I do prefer communicating per e-mail with my students and I
won’t be much in my office due to the covid-19 crisis is not really over)
our grader is Ehl.noethr@gmail.com, you shall get an email from her or him before in the second week, make sure it does not go into your spam folder
the “law of the land” is “Homework
is due the Sunday following its assignment at 10:00 PM PST. Late
submissions will not be accepted without prior approval from myself. Approval
will only be given for good reasons. Please include your PSU ID# in the
subject of your email, only submit PDFs, with filenames as follows:
PH311-HW#-Your_Name.pdf
You will get your homework back on Monday and I will run a PSU-Student ID based list by you on Tuesday on how well everybody is doing. All homeworks are listed below.
In case that there will be a PSU wide mask mandate indoors and in all crowded outdoor settings. If a single student were to refuses to wear a covid-19 protection mask in class, I would have no choice but to dismiss the whole class and report the incident to the dean of student life. https://vimeo.com/592939297/2d278652c0. Eating and drinking is prohibited in classrooms per order of PSU’s Incident Management Team (per campus wide email). The same email encourages you to fill out a PSU Mask Policy Violation Report (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd5Hwl_6y9taxgv1IwiUlpxzC9Doifx7n21uqwEcjqf8jMoHw/viewform)
PSU Alcohol and Drug Free Workplace Policy applies to all students, faculty, staff, and visitors to campus.
In case of questions on PSU’s covid-19 prevention policies: https://www.pdx.edu/covid-19-response.
The British newspaper Guardian, September 10, 2021: “Even
highly vaccinated colleges have seen outbreaks. At
As of December 2023: Overall, 3,065,513 people or only 73% of Oregon's population are considered fully vaccinated, https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-tracker-states/state/oregon/
Basic Needs at
It can be challenging to do your best in class if you have trouble
meeting basic needs like safe shelter, sleep, and nutrition. Resource centers
across campus are here to provide assistance, referrals, and support. Please
contact anyone on this list for assistance.
Basic Needs Hub, basicneedshub@pdx.edu
Portland State Food Pantry, psufp.com, pantry@pdx.edu
C.A.R.E. Team, askdos@pdx.edu, (503) 725-4422
As for the usage of information technology in class and
multi-tasking, research
shows that it does more harm than good. It is also like passive smoking; even
the students who want to concentrate on the lecture get distracted by it. So
find some way of dealing with that please amongst yourself.
Access and Inclusion for Students with Disabilities PSU
values diversity and inclusion; we are committed to fostering mutual respect
and full participation for all students. My goal is to create a learning
environment that is equitable, useable, inclusive, and welcoming. If any
aspects of instruction or course design result in barriers to your inclusion or
learning, please notify me. The Disability Resource Center (DRC) provides
reasonable accommodations for students who encounter barriers in the learning
environment. If you have, or think you may have, a disability that may affect
your work in this class and feel you need accommodations, contact the
If you already have accommodations, please contact me to make sure that I have
received a faculty notification letter and discuss your accommodations.
Students who need accommodations for tests and quizzes are expected to schedule
their tests to overlap with the time the class is taking the test.
Title IX Reporting Obligations As an instructor, one of my responsibilities is to help create a safe learning environment for my students and for the campus as a whole. Please be aware that as a faculty member, I have the responsibility to report any instances of sexual harassment, sexual violence and/or other forms of prohibited discrimination. If you would rather share information about sexual harassment, sexual violence or discrimination to a confidential employee who does not have this reporting responsibility, you can find a list of those individuals or contact a confidential advocate at 503-725-5672. For more information about Title IX please complete the required student module Creating a Safe Campus in your D2L. Update: concerning individual conversations with students If it appears a student may be about to share personal information with me, I now have to say “Before you start talking to me about anything that you want to keep confidential, I want to make sure you know that I have certain reporting obligations as a faculty/staff member. I am obligated to report to university officials any information I receive about discrimination or harassment, including sexual harassment and sexual misconduct/assault. If you would like to speak to someone confidentially at PSU then you can:
1) speak with an IPV Advocate in the Women’s
2) go to the Center Student Health and Counseling (SHAC) or
3) go to Student Legal Services."
This course is pretty rigorous! Rigorous
instruction requires
students to construct meaning for themselves, impose structure on information, integrate
individual skills into processes, operate within but at the outer edge of their
abilities, and apply what they learn in more than one context and to
unpredictable situations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigour
What
will be covered in PH 311/312?
The revolutions in the concepts of physics in the
early 20th century: special relativity, introduction to quantum mechanics:
black-body radiation, energy quantum ideas, Bohr/Rutherford theory of the atom,
Schroedinger
equation, wave functions, electronic structure of atoms, periodic table of
elements, nuclear structure, radioactivity, fission and fusion, (+ very
briefly: statistical physics and solid state physics).
Prerequisite: Ph 203, or Ph 213 and Mth 252, PH 312
is to be taken after PH 311 or a similar one quarter/one semester course, it does make no sense at all to show up for the second part
- PH 312 - without proper introduction to the subject. Also some prior
exposure to partial differential equations and complex numbers/functions are
highly advantageous.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
highly recommended text
books:
Modern Physics, by Thornton and Rex, any of four editions so far, should be in the PSU library as an ebook
Concepts of Modern Physics by A. Beiser, McGraw-Hill, any edition since the 2nd,
(the 6th edition by some Indian publisher
in paperback is very good value for your money but there are quite a few typos,
the fifth edition has essentially the same material but
much fewer typos)
Check out http://www.abebooks.com/ for cheep books
You better come to the lectures as
it is the things I pay special attention to in the lectures that will be asked
off you in the tests and exams.
only very good excuses with supporting documents
will allow you to reschedule your midterm and extraordinary good excuses with
supporting documents will allow you to reschedule your final exam
PH 312
as we will meet in a classroom, with or without mask, nobody knows right now
10 % attendance
25 % Midterm exam, 6th week (February 13) over the whole two hours of
regular class time
35
% Final exam, all topics after 10 weeks (Tuesday March 19) as set by
Portland State policies (10:15 am to 12:05 pm)
Homework Assignment links on this
website get updated every week on Thursday late afternoon/evening (sometimes very
late in the evening)
your homework assignments
Ph 311
HW1, HW2, HW3, HW4, HW5, HW6, HW7, HW8, HW9,
Ph 312
your homework assignments
HW1, HW2, HW3, HW4, HW5, HW6, HW7, HW8, HW9,
It is a good idea to download lecture
manuscripts below; BUT you do need to update/modify them during class yourself
in order to learn, also I keep on modifying these power point slides before
each class
chapter 6 here, pdf, four pages on total internal
reflection
Is the Moon there when Nobody looks? Reality versus
Quantum Theory? last lecture in the
course PH
312
Relative strengths and weaknesses of
selected textbooks that can be used with this course
Modern Physics by Thornton/Rex, any
of the 4 editions to far, pretty good, somewhere in between Beiser
and Tipler/Llewellen, I based the lecture slides for this course on slides that came with
this book
Concepts of Modern Physics by A. Beiser, McGraw-Hill, 6th edition, 2002, 542 pages,
(quite easy going but pretty much to the point, a few bits and pieces missing,
but a good thread throughout, unfortunately, there are quite a few typos in the
6th edition, but the 5th and 4th are just as
good and probably much cheaper, (the idea that mass increases with velocity is
outdated)
Modern Physics by P. A. Tipler, R.
A. Llewellen, 5th edition, Freeman, 2008,
(a bit heavier but the classical text for the serious student, best on
postmodern particle physics and cosmology, I served as one of the
chapter/concept reviewers).
Modern
Physics by R.A. Serway and C.J. Moses, 1st edition (and together with Moyer 3rd edition) about 550 pages without index, by the way, do
not purchase a copy of the 2nd edition (Saunders, 1997)
including MP Desktop software that is supposed to help the students and lots of
optional text which kind of makes it difficult to follow the thread), my
2002/2003 students did not like it much, but the first and 3rd
editions are fine (PSU faculty colleagues from the physics department and I
served as chapter accuracy reviewer for the third edition)
Modern Physics by Randy Harris, 2nd
(and earlier edition under the title Nonclassical physics: beyond Newton's
views), Wiley, 2008, 554 pages plus some 100 pages with appendices, (good, conceptual,
some formula and material missing but good descriptions, not much on the
history of modern physics, but many examples on how modern physics is used in
current technologies, ... I really like it)
Modern Physics for Scientist and Engineers by John R. Taylor, Chris
D. Zafiratos, Michael A. Dubson,
2nd edition, Prentice Hall, 2004, 720 pages, (many good examples in
the text, good reviews of classical physics concepts from time to time,
comprehensive atomic mass table, operators and expectation values first show up
in the section on the hydrogen atoms, rather than in the section on quantum
mechanics in one dimension, makes it a bit more difficult than perhaps
necessary)
Modern Physics by Kenneth Krane, 3rd
(and both earlier editions), Wiley, 2012, about 600 pages, (more conceptual,
frequent connections to classical physics, quite easy going, sometimes too
simplistic for my liking, but a good book)
Modern Physics by Hans C. Ohanian,
2nd edition, Prentice Hall, 457 pages without appendices, (a bit
week on solid state physics but otherwise OK, mathematical level is moderate,
but the useful Wentzel, Kramers and Brillouin (WKB) approximation for very gradual variations
of the time independent potential and short wavelength standing waves is
mentioned)
Modern Physics by J. Bernstein, P.
M. Fishbane and S. Gasiorowicz,
Prentice Hall, 2000, 602 pages, (somewhat tough going at places; sometimes
explanations are not provided in sufficient detail for the mathematically less
gifted student)
Modern Physics for
Scientists and Engineers, 2nd edition, John C. Morrison, Elsevier, Academic
Press, 2015, pretty good but "unusual" sequence of material, i.e.
relativity in chapters 11 and 12, but then it includes the Dirac theory of the
electron which the typical textbooks typically only mention briefly or ignore
altogether, about 400 pages, no appendix with atomic mass table as it is
semi-standard in this kind of book.
Modern Physics from α to Z0 by James W. Rohlf, John Wiley and Sons. Inc., 1994, 569 pages plus some
60 pages appendix, good book for very dedicated students, but somewhat
unconventional sequence in presenting the material, i.e. it starts with a
survey of particles and forces and within some 20 pages arrives at Feynman
diagrams and the fine structure constant, which other text may cover at page
200 or so in case of the fine structure constant (or not at all in case of
Feynman diagrams). The Lorentz transformations, on the other hand, only come up
after some 100 pages. Since the book was published 1994, the top quark is
missing, but otherwise if is very good. It is almost like a reference book
rather than an undergraduate textbook, although there are lots and lots of
worked out problems! Perhaps there were no further editions because not many
instructors recommended this text for their classes for students with mixed
backgrounds?
Concepts of Modern Physics, Unraveling Old and New
Mysteries by George Duffey, 2010, Solomon Press, 330 pages,
(only two pages of appendices and other shortcomings when compared to the
dedicated undergraduate texts above). Instructors may like it because it is
very concise, almost like a collection of the most important formulae and
concepts.
I particularly like his concluding statement: In a
fundamental sense, all extant physical theories are false. Each is a good
representation of nature only over a limited range of the independent variables.
Many undergraduate students and the general public may have some difficulty
appreciating this simple fact.
Introduction to Modern Physics, Theoretical Foundations, J. D. Walecka, World Scientific, 2008, this has been used for a
freshman advanced modern physics course at Stanford
University, it covers much more material than the books above but will only serve the very bests of physics
students. A good use of this text would be for a senior (or higher) modern
physics/quantum mechanics course. The material we will cover in our course is
only about one third of the material in this book.
ebook only (as far as I know) Modern Physics for Science and Engineering, M. L.
Burns, ISBN: 978-0-9713134-4-6,
very good coverage of classical and quantum statistical mechanics, rest is OK,
but no nuclear and particle physics at all (from all the books above, it provides the best
treatment of statistical mechanics, possibly a bit too much for an introductory
300 level course)
a complementary book for worked problems:
Schaum(s) Outlines Modern Physics, by R. Gautreau and W. Savin, 2nd
edition, Mc Graw-Hill, 1999, does not substitute for a genuine textbook
Quantum Physics for Scientist and Technologies, by Paul Sanghera, Wiley 2011, is also
pretty good for complementary reading. As the title implies, there are no
dedicated chapters on special and/or general relativity, but the book covers
pretty much the same material as the dedicated modern physics textbooks
mentioned above. Many of the important formulae are present (including the
time-independent Schroedinger equation in spherical
coordinates), but there is much more text explaining the concepts in plain
English. Some discussion, e.g. that of the Zeeman effect, are incomplete (and
result, e.g. in equation 8.13 being wrong). Because of its well written text
and there are many section “living in the quantum world” on modern applications
of quantum mechanics (that the classical modern physics textbooks do not have),
this book may be helpful to many undergraduates.
direct quotes ----------------
David Mermin: It is because nothing required us to apprehend atomic structure during
our evolutionary development that we are incapable of understanding what it is
that quantum mechanics describes. Quantum mechanics is weird to us because we
can make inferences about the atomic world only indirectly through the
correlations we can arrange for it (called measurements) which those parts of
the world (called classical) that evolution has outfitted us directly to
apprehend.
Richard P. Feynman in chapter 1 of QED, the strange theory of light and matter gives good
advice for the novice student of modern physics
I would like to talk a little bit about
understanding. When we have a lecture, there are many reasons why you might not
understand the speaker. One is, his language is bad, he does not say what he
means to say, or he says it upside down, and it is hard to understand. That is
a rather trivial matter, and I will try my best to avoid too much of my
Another possibility, especially if the lecturer is a
physicist, is that he uses ordinary words in a funny way. Physicist often use
ordinary words as work or action or energy or even, as you shall see, light for
some technical purpose. Thus, when I talk about work in physics, I do not mean
the same thing as when I talk about work on the street. During this lecture I
might use one of those words without noticing that it is being used in this
unusual way. I will try my best to catch myself, that is my job, but it is an
error that is easy to make.
The next reason that you might think you do not
understand what I am telling you is, while I am describing to you how Nature
works, you will not understand why Nature works that way. But you see,
nobody understands that. I can not explain why Nature behaves in this
peculiar way.
Finally, there is this possibility: after I tell you
something, you just can not believe it. You can not accept it. You do not like
it. A little screen comes down and you do not listen anymore, I am going to
describe to you how Nature is, and if you do not like it, that is going to get
in the way of your understanding it. It is a problem that physicists have learned
to deal with: They have learned to realize that whether they like a theory of
they do not like a theory is not the essential question. Rather, it is whether
or not the theory gives predictions that agree with experiment. It is not a
question of whether a theory is philosophical delightful, or easy to
understand, or perfectly reasonable form the point of view of common sense. The
theory of quantum electrodynamics describes nature as absurd form the point of
view of common sense. And it agrees fully with experiment.
John Wheeler: Behind it all is surely an
idea so simple, so beautiful, that when we grasp it - in a decade, a century,
or a millennium - we will all say to each other, how could it have been
otherwise? How could we have been so stupid?
We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of
knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
If you did not get an A this time, do
not worry too much, I did not get straight As all my life, and neither did
Werner Heisenberg. If you want to know how badly he screwed up his final PhD
exam, click here,
nevertheless he defended his second (higher level) doctor degree (habilitation
that allows a German to become a lecturer (Docent) at a university) at age 23
and was professor of physics at Leipzig University at age 25, as well as one of
the greatest physicists ever.