Spring 2025 P143A

PHYS 14300 Section 1 Honors Waves, Optics, and Heat

Quick links: Canvas LabWiki Videos

Instructor: Cheng Chin

Lectures: MWF 9:30‐10:20 am @ KPTC120

Office hours: MW 5-6 pm @ GCIS E107

Textbooks: Waves by David Morin

Laboratory administrators: Mark Chantell, Dave McCowan

Teaching and Lab Assistant:

Discussion sessions (starting week 2):

Homeworks, Midterm and Final:

All homeworks should be submitted to Canvas in the format of pdf before the deadline. They will be returned to the students on Canvas. Late policy for HWs and Lab reports: -10% per day. Midterm and Final will be in class.

Lab and Lab Reports (starting week 3)

Students will meet for in person labs (2 hours 50 minutes) once per week beginning in Week 3.

Students will work in-lab in groups of 3 and will keep a group electronic lab notebook; this will be submitted electronically at the end of each lab session. Students will also submit a short individual “summary" after each lab that involves summarizing their results and drawing conclusions; this will be due online 24 hours after the end of the lab session.

If a student misses a lab due to an excused absence and cannot make it up that same week, we have one make-up assignment (not linked on the website). This assignment is a completely remote lab task that can be graded to provide the points missed by the lab absence. There is no mechanism for making up more than one missed lab during the quarter.

Grade distribution: HWs 35%, Lab 25%, Midterm 20% and Final 20%

Class Outline

Week	Date	Lecture	Text/Lab info.
1	3/24	Lecture 1: Simple harmonic oscillator (Math) Ordinary Differential Equation and complex number	Chapter 1.1
	3/26	Lecture 2: Damped harmonic oscillator (Math) Solving non-homogeneous ODEs	Chapter 1.2
	3/28	Lecture 3: Driven oscillator	Chapter 1.3
2	3/31	Lecture 4: Coupled oscillators	Chapter 2.1 and 2.2
	4/02	Lecture 5: N coupled oscillators (Math) Eigenvalues and eigenvectors	Chapter 2.3
	4/04	Lecture 6: Normal modes	Deadline to change lab section (tkurns@uchicago.edu)
3	4/07	Lecture 7: Wave equation	Chapter 2.4 Lab: Wave Motion and Sound
	4/09	Lecture 8: Spectral Analysis (Math) Fourier expansion and Fourier transform	Chapter 3.1, 3.2, 3.3
	4/11	Lecture 9: Spectral Analysis (Math) Partial differential equation
4	4/14	Lecture 10: Transverse waves	Chapter 4.1 Lab: Interference
	4/16	Lecture 11: Reflection and transmission	Chapter 4.2
	4/18	Lecture 12: Longitudinal waves: Sound	Chapter 5.1, 5.2, 5.3
5	4/21	Midterm	Lab: Diffraction
	4/23	Lecture 13: Electromagneitc waves	Chapter 8.2
	4/25	Lecture 14: Electromagneitc waves (Math) Vector calculus	Chapter 8.3, 8.4
6	4/28	Lecture 15: Wave phenomena Dispersion and group velocity	Chapter 6.3, Lab: Geometric Optics
	4/30	Lecture 16: Wave phenomena Doppler effects, Aether, and shock waves	Chapter 7.2
	5/02	Lecture 17: Geometrical Optics Polarization	Chapter 8.6
7	5/05	Lecture 18: Geometrical Optics Interface and lenses	Chapter 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 9.4, 9.5 Lab: Polarization
	5/07	Lecture 19: Diffraction Single and double slit diffraction	Chapter 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 9.4, 9.5
	5/09	Lecture 20: Diffraction Multi-slit diffraction	Chapter 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 9.4, 9.5
8	5/12	Lecture 21: Ideal gas Kinetic theory of ideal gas	Lab: Thin film interference
	5/14	Lecture 22: Heat engines Thermodynamic processes
	5/16	Lecture 23: Heat engines Carnot cycle
9	5/19	Lecture 24: Laws of thermodynamics
	5/21	Lecture 25: Entropy
	5/23	Lecture 26: Thermodynamic transport Heat transfer
10	5/	Final exam