Course info:

Instructor         Prof. Nicola Spaldin, Room 2007 MRL, x7920, nicola@mrl.ucsb.edu
Office Hours   Tuesdays,  9  - 11 am

Web page         http://www.mrl.ucsb.edu/~nicola/211A_2005.html

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

Teaching assistant     Amorette Getty, x8577, amorette@engineering.ucsb.edu
TA Office Hours       Thursdays, 9.30 - 11.30, ESB Room 3215

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 spend roughly the first half of each class session with the usual boring lectures on new material by me, and the second half working on problems in small groups. Since I'll be spending less time on syllabus transmission during class, some of the course content will be covered in reading assignments; to compensate for the extra reading, there'll be fewer homework problems since we'll get more practice on problems during class time. In order for this format to be successful, attendance at class sessions is encouraged.
 

Books:

Required:
P.W. Atkins and R.S. Friedman, Molecular Quantum Mechanics, Oxford University Press (2000). This one will be our primary text book for the course

Recommended:
H. Kroemer, Quantum Mechanics, Prentice Hall (1994). This book is particularly good for those of you who have a strong background in wave mechanics

Feynman, Leighton and Sands, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, vol. III. This one is very good for concepts and understanding.

Grading and rules:

Your grade will be based equally on your performance in 3 areas: 1) the homework sets, 2)  the mid-term and 3) the final exam.

Homework will be assigned on Wednesdays, and will be collected in class the following Wednesday. Late homework will not be accepted, but your lowest score will be dropped when calculating your total to accomodate sickness/busy-ness/travel.

The Mid-term exam. will be on Wednesday Feb. 9th, in class. The final exam. will be on Monday March 14th, 4-7pm. For the mid-term exam. you will be allowed to bring in 1 page of notes, written on one side; for the final you can have notes on 2 sides.

Course outline:
 

Schedule Changes:

We will not have class on Monday February 7th

We will have a make-up classes on Monday January 17th (MLK day) at our usual time/place

Homeworks and in-class problems:

Week 1 in-class problems and solutions.

Week 2 in-class problems and solutions.

Week 3 in-class problems. Solutions were handed out in class.

Week 4 in-class problems and solutions.

Week 5 in-class problems and solutions.

Week 7 in-class problems (week 6 was the mid-term, so we didn't do problems) and solutions.

Week 8 in-class problems

Some additional notes that we will use:

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