Physics: Quantum Mechanics & Relativity

The main goals of physics education are to prepare students to:

• Understand the fundamental workings of nature

• Use physics principles to solve real-world problems

• Understand facts and communicate science logically

This course will go through the theoretical parts of the two main pillars of modern physics:

quantum mechanics and relativity (both special and general theories).

The aim is to learn the theories that we use to understand how our universe works on the macroscopic and as well as microscopic regimes. Therefore the students are expected to have basic math skills.

Topics:

1. Light: Lens to our outside world

◦ Light as a wave, frequency, wavelength and time period, spectrum of light, light as

electromagnetic radiation, why different objects have different colours.

2. Quantum Mechanics

◦ Classical and quantum viewpoints in physics, correspondence principle, particle-wave

duality, blackbody radiation, understanding blackbody spectrum, Planck’s radiation law,

photoelectric effect, de-Broglie waves, double slit experiment.

◦ Postulates of quantum mechanics, Hilbert space, Copenhagen interpretation, wavefunctions

and properties, operators in quantum mechanics.

◦ Schrodinger’s cat and the quantum superposition, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle,

quantum entanglement (spooky action at a distance), application to black hole.

3. Special relativity

◦ Basic principles of special relativity, constant nature of velocity of light, inertial reference

frame, Michelson-Morley experiment

◦ Relativity of simultaneity, time dilation, the twin-paradox and grandfather paradox, length

contraction, concept of mass in relativity, energy-mass equivalence, applications to the Sun.

4. General relativity

◦ Newtonian gravity and force equation, problems with Newtonian gravity, precession of

Mercury’s orbit, general principle of relativity, equivalence principle, absence of gravity in

free-fall.

◦ Bending of light by gravity, gravitational frequency shift of light, Doppler effect, redshift

and blueshift, Pound-Rebka experiment: testing Einstein’s theory.