phy1520

Graduate Quantum Mechanics notes now available on paper from amazon

June 11, 2019 phy1520 ,

My notes for “Graduate Quantum Mechanics” (PHY1520H) taught by Prof. Arun Paramekanti, fall 2015. (435 pages), are now available on paper (black and white) through kindle-direct-publishing for $12 USD.

This book is dedicated to my siblings.

Kindle-direct-publishing is a print on demand service, and allows me to make the notes available for pretty close to cost (in this case, about $6 printing cost, $5 to amazon, and about $1 to me as a token royalty).  The notes are still available for free in PDF form, and the latex sources are also available should somebody feel motivated enough to submit a merge request with corrections or enhancements.

This grad quantum course was especially fun.  When I took this class, I had enjoyed the chance to revisit the subject.  Of my three round match against QM, I came out much less bloody this time than the first two rounds.

These notes are no longer redacted and include whatever portions of the problem I completed, errors and all.  In the event that any of the problem sets are recycled for future iterations of the course, students who are taking the course (all mature grad students pursuing science for the love of it, not for grades) are expected to act responsibly, and produce their own solutions, within the constraints provided by the professor.

Changelog:

phy1520.V0.1.9-3 (June 10, 2019)

  • First version posted to kindle-direct successfully.
  • Lots of 6×9 formatting fixes made.
  • Add commas and periods to equations.
  • Remove blank lines that cause additional undesired indenting (implied latex \par’s).

Marks are in for Winter 2016

May 18, 2016 Incoherent ramblings , , , , , , , , , , ,

I started my formal re-education program back in 2010 after 20 years out of school. The first few courses were particularly tough after such a long break from school (and exam based courses still are), but I’m getting the hang of playing that game again. Here’s my score so far:

Crs Code  Title                                    Wgt  Mrk  Grd    CrsAvg
PHY356H1  Quantum Mechanics I                      0.50  78  B+     C+
PHY450H1  Rel Electrodynamics                      0.50  78  B+     *
PHY456H1  Quantum Mechanics II                     0.50  72  B-     C+
PHY454H1  Continuum Mech                           0.50  85  A      B
PHY485H1  Adv Classical Optics                     0.50  85  A      *
PHY452H1  Basic Stat Mechanics                     0.50  81  A-     B-
PHY487H1  Condensed Matter I                       0.50  80  A-     B+
ECE1254H  Modeling of Multiphysics Systems         0.50      A+
ECE1229H  Advanced Antenna Theory                  0.50      A-
PHY1520H  Quantum Mechanics                        0.50      A-
PHY1610H  Scientific Computing for Physicists      0.50      A+

This last grad course is the only one of which they gave (informally through email) a non-letter grade (97). That one happened to be very well suited to me, and did not have anything based on exams nor on presentations (just assignments). They were demanding assignments (and fun), so I had to work really hard for that 97.

As a returning student I really suck at classes that have marks that are highly biased towards exams. My days of showing up late for class, sleeping through big chunks of the parts that I did get their in time for, and still breezing through the exams are long gone. Somehow in my youth I could do that, and still be able to quickly and easily barf out all the correct exam answers without thinking about it. I got a 99 in first year calculus doing exactly that, although it helped that the Central Technical School’s math department kicked butt, and left Prof Smith with only a review role.

Now I take a lot more time thinking things through, and also take a lot of time writing up my notes (which would sometimes have been spent better doing practise problems). It’s funny thinking back to undergrad where I had such scorn for anybody that took notes. Now I do just that, but in latex. I would be the object of my own scorn X10, if I met my teenage self again!

First update of aggregate notes for phy1520, Graduate Quantum Mechanics

October 2, 2015 phy1520 ,

I’ve posted a first update of my aggregate notes for PHY1520H Graduate Quantum Mechanics, taught by Prof. Arun Paramekanti. This includes lecture notes up to lecture 5, my ungraded solutions for the first problem set, and a number of worked problems from chapter 1 and 2 of Sakurai done as review preparation for the course (since I hadn’t done QM since 2011).

Most of the content was posted individually in the following locations. Bug fixes and enhancements to the original documents will only be made in the aggregate notes.

Notes from reading Sakurai’s QM, prep for graduate Quantum Mechanics (PHY1520H)

September 14, 2015 phy1520 , ,

I start the lectures for grad Quantum Mechanics (PHY1520H) tomorrow, taught by Prof. Arun Paramekanti.

The curriculum has scary range of material, although some of it will be review. As prep for that, I’ve been working some problems, and have also explored a few interesting details and digressions. My notes for that preparatory work, collecting a number of individual posts from over the summer, is now posted.