Course info:

Instructor         Prof. Nicola Spaldin, Room 2007 MRL x7920, nicola@mrl.ucsb.edu
Office Hours   Thursdays 2-4 pm.

Web page         http://www.mrl.ucsb.edu/~nicola/211A.html

Class Time       Monday and Wednesday 2-3.50 pm
Place                 1437  Phelps

Extra Office Hours: Kevin Hennessy will hold additional office hours on Tuesdays from 3-5pm in the ECE TA trailer (on your left as you face the library with your back to Engineering I or the MRL). Kevin's e-mail address is kjh@ece.ucsb.edu

Course philosophy:

You can only learn quantum mechanics by doing it, not by listening to someone talk about it in two hour blocks. Therefore the classroom sessions in this course will be a little unconventional. We'll have some of the usual boring lectures on new material by me, but a good deal of the time will be spent working on problem/discussion worksheets in small groups. In order for this format to be successful you are required to complete the reading assignment (listed below) before the start of the week, and attendance at class sessions is encouraged.
 

Course outline:
 

Books:

P.W. Atkins and R.S. Friedman, Molecular Quantum Mechanics, Oxford University Press (2000) (required).
H. Kroemer, Quantum Mechanics, Prentice Hall (1994) (recommended).
Feynman, Leighton and Sands, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, vol. III (recommended).

Grading:

Your grade will be based equally on your performance in the mid-term and final exams. Both exams. will be in the style of the worksheets. You will be allowed to bring in the notes that you have written during the course, and your own solutions to the worksheets. (Text books, and photocopies of my notes/solutions are not allowed).

Worksheets:

We will start a new worksheet in class each week, and you should aim to complete it by the following week, when solutions will be available. We will work together on the problems, but I recommend that you complete a final write-up on your own and compare your working with those of your colleagues and with mine. The worksheets will not be graded, but if you don't complete them you might find the exams. difficult.

The worksheets can be downloaded from the links below in pdf format

Worksheet 1 

Worksheet 2 

Worksheet 4

Worksheet 5

Worksheet 6

Worksheet 7

Worksheet 8


Schedule Changes:

We will not have class on the following dates:
Monday January 27th, Monday February 3rd, Wednesday March 5th, Monday March 10th

We will have make-up classes from 2-4 pm on the following dates:
Friday January 24th, Friday February 7th, Friday February 21st

I will be unable to hold office hours on Thursday March 6th, but will hold "make-up" office hours on Saturday March 8th from 2-4pm.

Some additional notes that we will use:

Here are the extra notes on postulates of quantum mechanics

Here are the extra notes on matrix notation

Here are the extra notes on the uncertainty principle

Here are the extra notes on harmonic oscillators

Here is the extra handout with the alternative harmonic oscillator derivation

Here are the extra notes on applications of harmonic oscillators

Here and Here are the extra notes on angular momentum

Here are the extra notes on the variational principle

Here is the extra handout on molecular orbital theory

Here and Here are the extra notes on time-independent perturbation theory

Here  and Here  and Here  are the extra notes on time-dependent perturbation theory