PHY313/CEI544 Home Page
Fall 2007
CLASS TODAY IS CANCELLED DUE TO SNOW, Dec. 13, 2007
You can turn homework-11 in to C-102 any time before 5pm on Friday, Dec. 14.
The in-class extra-credit quiz is replaced by an at-home extra credit
quiz, which can be found
HERE.
The quiz is due before 5pm on Friday, Dec. 14.
It can be turned in to my office (C-102) or via email.
THE BNL TOUR WAS ON OCTOBER 4, 2007
Even if you did not sign up last week, you are welcome to
participate. Just be at the circle by the SAC by 5:15pm.
The bus will leave campus at 5:20pm and return at approximately
8:30pm. If you strongly prefer to drive yourself to BNL, that
will also be possible. You will need to leaver your car at the
entrance of the lab (there is a small parking area) and board
the bus when it arrives. Be sure to be there by 6pm! Following
the tour, the bus will drop you off back at your cars.
- To be allowed to enter the Brookhaven Lab site, you must
have a picture ID and show it to the guard at the gate when
he comes through the bus.
- The areas we will visit are not posted for radiation
hazards. BNL will allow the tour to be taken by pregnant individuals
if they wish to do so.
- Please no sandals or shorts, to make sure that we can safely
look at the equipment.
- Reminder: The tour is not required for the
course and tour attendance is not included in the grade.
This is the home page for the PHY313 and CEI544 courses entitled
"Mystery of Matter" and "From Quarks to the Cosmos" respectively for
the Fall 2007 semester.
The course is intended to introduce and explain at a qualitative
level the progress physics has made during the past century in
understanding the way in which the universe works. We will surpass
the "common sense" understanding each of us has learned through our
five senses by exploring how the concepts of modern physics
were discovered, what they mean, and how they impact our lives
today.
We will explore:
The Big Picture
The universe is believed to have been born of
intense heat sufficient to generate all the mass and energy we see
today, as well as a bunch of mass and energy that we can't yet see.
The Big Bang is the origin of all the particles, such as quarks, gluons
and leptons. As the universe cooled and expanded, matter
condensed out, forming neutrons and protons, nuclei, and
finally the atoms and molecules that surround us. One route to
understanding this origin is to recreate a small chunk of the early
universe using powerful accelerators to reheat a tiny region of space
(about the size of a nucleus) to conditions we believe existed at
a few millionths of a second after the Big Bang. This is done at
the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at nearby Brookhaven
National Laboratory. We will visit this facility and some of the
large particle detectors used there.
Development of the Concepts
- Quantum Mechanics: The struggle to grasp how all things carry the
seemingly opposite properties of both waves and particles. Why bound
systems of particles such as electrons trapped by an atom of protons
and neutrons residing in a nucleus are like notes on a musical
instrument. How particles can leap forbidden regions to appear
unscathed on the other side.
- Special Relativity: The fact that the experience of time itself
is not common to all things, but varies with the velocity of a
particle. How light speed becomes the ultimate speed limit.
- Nuclei and Particles: What kind of subatomic particles exist
and how they fit together to make our world. We will see what
nuclear radioactivity consists of, how it works, and ways in which
we can put it to good use. We will also see what quarks and gluons
are and how they existed in a "quark gluon plasma" the Universe
was a lot hotter and smaller.
- Neutrinos:
The measurement of
neutrinos coming from the sun and how the mystery of the "missing
solar neutrinos" was solved. How we finally figured out that these
particles, long thought to be massless, do have some mass after all.
- Antimatter:
What it is and how it was predicted. How antiparticles were
discovered experimentally and what's being studied now.
- Stars:
What stars are made of and how they work. The stellar lifecycle
from birth to death to rebirth. We will also talk about supernovas
and black holes.
- String theory:
What is it all about and what can it tell us about the universe?
The Players
- If we look at matter extremely closely, we see that it is made
of "atoms"...bound systems of
electrons orbiting a positively charged nucleus.
- Looking more closely, the nucleus is seen to be made from protons
and neutrons bound together by a force different from the familiar
gravity and electromagnetism.
- Looking yet more closely, the protons and neutrons are themselves
composed of smaller pieces called quarks and gluons.
- If we turn our microscope around and look at phenomena at large
scales, we see stars and galaxies, all the way to the edge of the
visible Universe. We will discuss how the facts learned by studying
the smallest scales impact our understanding how large objects work.
The Tools
- Accelerators (Atom smashers). Why they are useful. How they work.
Why they are so big and getting bigger.
- Detectors. How they work. What we learn. How some of the
developments for better particle detectors turn into things we use
in our daily lives. We will
tour the PHENIX experiment
located at the Brookhaven National
Laboratory's RHIC
Accelerator.
- Applications of the tools of modern physics to other areas of
modern life, such as nuclear reactors, nuclear medicine,
radiocarbon dating, high
density computer farms, the world-wide-web, GPS, and more.
The Textbook(s)
We shall not use any particular book as the text for this course.
Instead, we will follow along with the web links I have attached on
the lecture pages. However, the popular books that are most pertinent
to the course are listed here should you choose to purchase one or
all:
The books are available via the links for a fraction of the list
price as used books.
As we are not following any given text, you should follow the lecture
links as your principle resource. Roughly 1/2 of the material for the
homeworks can be determined directly from the web link, however, the
other 1/2 will require your attendance in lecture.
Grading and Homeworks
The grade in the course is determined entirely by the homework
assignments. All homework assignments will be posted via this web
site and shown in class. Assignments will be due the following
week and will be turned in at the beginning of class.
PLEASE NOTE THAT HOMEWORKS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED ELECTRONICALLY.
IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO MAKE IT TO CLASS, YOU WILL NEED TO GET IT TO
MY OFFICE BEFORE 5:30PM ON THURSDAY.
Please refresh your browser
after you have seen the lecture, to ensure that you answer
the correct version of the homework!!! Homework assignments will
appear right here.
general instructions
- Homework #1 will be due on Thursday September 20.
- Homework #2 will be due on Thursday September 27.
- Homework #3 will be due on Thursday October 11.
- Homework #4 will be due on Thursday October 18.
- Homework #5 will be due on Thursday October 25.
- Homework #6 will be due on Thursday November 8.
- Homework #7 will be due on Thursday November 15.
- Homework #8 will be due on TUESDAY November 20.
- Homework #9 will be due on Thursday November 29.
- Homework #10 will be due on Thursday December 6.
- Homework #11 will be due on Thursday December 13.
Location of Lecture
Lectures take place on Thursdays from 5:20 to 8:20 pm.
The lectures will be held in the NSL control room in the basement
of
the Physics Building. This facility has projection equipment
and a smartboard for displaying the
web links during lecture.
Office Hours
Office hours will be held in C-102 (my office)
on Wednesdays from 1-2pm, Thursdays from 4-5pm, or by appointment.
The best way to make an appointment is to send me an email:
Barbara.Jacak@stonybrook.edu.
Lecture Links
Material for the lectures can all be found on the web. The following
web links represent material for the lectures. Links will appear
during the semester, as the lectures take place.
Although the links are helpful, they are not a
textbook. Weaving these into a single consistent story will be done
in the lecture. Roughly 1/2 the material for the homework assignments
will come from the lecture additions to the web contents. Earning a
high grade in the course will almost certainly require attendance of
the lecture.
- September 6 lecture. The topic is the troubles in 19th century physics and the quantum solution. We'll discuss particles and waves.
- September 20 lecture. Topics are waves, quantum numbers, wave functions, and the uncertainty principle. We will start to talk about radioactivity.
- September 27 lecture. The topic is the tools of modern physics. Here is the Lecture outline .
- October 11 lecture. Topics are Rutherford scattering, nuclei and radioactivity.
- October 18 lecture. Topics are nuclear structure, decays, neutrinos and muons.
- November 1 lecture. Nuclear Fission and Fusion: reactors, bombs and stars.
- November 8 lecture. The life and death of stars, neutron stars, and black holes.
- November 15 lecture. Antimatter, quarks and the Standard Model of Particle Physics.
- November 20 lecture. Nuclear Medicine and imaging.
- November 29 lecture. String Theory.
- December 6 lecture. 11 Science Questions for the New Century.
Some Cool Links Related to Course
For further information contact Professor Jacak: Barbara.Jacak@stonybrook.edu
see Prof. Jacak in the middle of the PHENIX detector.
