This is the home page for the Spring version of PHY100 - The Magic of Physics. Although this session of the course shares much with the Fall version given by Professor Steinberg, the two are not identical. The document has the following sections:
| You may jump to the link for the most recent class by clicking on the arrow to the right. | |
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." |
This half course is a survey of Physics, with an emphasis on modern Physics. It is designed for non-scientists, and I assume no background in either science or mathematics. The approach is broad rather than deep.
You may recall that in the Wizard of Oz Toto pulls back the curtain to reveal the source of the magic in the story: it is just an ordinary person manipulating dials, switches and levers on an elaborate machine. In this course we will pull back the curtain a bit to reveal some of the machine that is the physical universe, and will then discuss how the machine works.
Let's get clear right now a topic of some concern to many students: mathematics. In PHY100S we will not do any of the algebra or calculus based problem solving that is typical of high school Physics courses as well as PHY110Y, PHY138Y and PHY140Y. Thus, the course concentrates on the concepts, and you can do well without writing down a single number. However, from time to time we will be using graphs, estimates, and powers of 10 to aid you in becoming numerate, which is the mathematical equivalent of literate. You will perhaps want to know that although I really like the text for this course, Hobson Physics: Concepts and Connections, he sometimes is more mathematical than we will be either in class or on the test and exam.
You may well find yourself surprised at the power and subtlety of the concepts that are the basis of our discussion. For example, when discussing the Newtonian worldview it is common for some students to think: "This idea is over 300 years old (which is true) and is easy to understand (which it is not)."
Scientific advances always occur in the social and cultural context of the scientists leading the quest for a new understanding. The new way of thinking about the physical universe, in turn, influences society and culture. A small example: 100 years ago nobody used the now common phrase "quantum jump" because the concept behind the phrase was not known. We will include in our discussion the two-way interaction between science and society.
The table below is the projected syllabus for PHY100S. It is certain that it will change as the term proceeds. After each class the topics and textbook sections will be updated as necessary, and a link will appear in the More column to a summary for that class. Textbook sections that are listed are examinable; textbook sections that are not listed are not. Classes that are identified by (PCQ) will begin with a Pre-Class Quiz; further information about these quizzes appears later in this document.
| For your convenience, a print-friendly version of the above syllabus has been prepared in pdf format. It will appear in a separate window, and may be accessed by clicking on the blue button to the right. |  |
There will be 2 classes and 1 tutorial every week. The classes meet at 5PM on Mondays and Wednesdays in MP102. Your tutorial will be either Monday or Wednesday at 6PM, depending on the section.
Here is the marking scheme and due dates:
| What | Percentage | Due Date |
|---|---|---|
Pre-Class Quizzes |
5 |
Almost every week, by Monday at 5PM |
Homework |
10 |
Most weeks by 5PM on Monday in the Drop Box for your tutor |
Short Paper |
10 |
In the Drop Box for you tutor by 5 PM January 30 |
Test |
15 |
Wed. Feb 15, 5 PM |
Long Paper |
25 |
In the Drop Box for you tutor by 5 PM April 3 |
Final Exam |
35 |
TBA |
The remainder of this section provides some details on these components of the mark.
Imagine you are taking a course on Shakespeare. The course is discussing the play Hamlet. However you have not yet read or seen the play. In class the professor asks:
"But why didn't Hamlet obey the ghosts, and thus save seven of the eight lives?"
You, of course, have no idea what she is talking about. What ghosts? What lives? Why only seven?
The point is that it is important to read the material that will be discussed in class before that discussion. And this is as true in PHY100S as it is for a course on Shakespeare.
However students are very busy people, and many need extra motivation to do the readings before the class. The Pre-Class Quizzes are intended to provide this motivation.
Almost every week a short quiz will be given on the readings for the coming 2 or 3 classes. They are intended to be easy if you have actually read the material. The quizzes will be given at the beginning of class.
There will be a total of about nine Pre-Class Quizzes during the term. The lowest two quizzes will be dropped. Each of the remaining seven will count equally towards your mark in the course.
There will be a Problem Set most weeks. Usually the homework will be from the end of the chapters of the textbook, and will be marked pass/fail. In order to pass a Problem Set you must show evidence of attempting to solve all the problems. Each Problem Set counts equally towards your total Homework mark.
The first homework assignment is due in tutorial the week of January 16. All subsequent homework assignments will be turned in using the Drop Boxes at the day and time specified when the assignment is released.
You will write a short paper of about 2 pages. It is due in the appropriate Drop Box by 5PM on Monday January 30. The assignment is:
Discuss the scientific method, evolution, creationism, and intelligent design.
You are not expected to either defend or attack the scientific method and/or evolution and/or creationism and/or intelligent design.
There will be a 1 hour test on Wednesday February 15 at 5PM. The locations are shown in the table:
| Tutor | Groups | Test Location |
|---|---|---|
Zeina Khan |
M1 W3 |
Sanford Fleming SF 3201 |
Michael Rogers |
M3 |
|
Michael Rogers |
W1 |
Sanford Fleming SF 3202 |
Constantine Nenkov |
M2 W5 |
|
Jeff Taylor, Debra Wunch |
M4 M5 W2 W4 |
McLennan MP102 |
There will be a 3 hour Final Exam. The day, time and location of the test will be announced.
The format of the test and exam will be the same:
You will write a paper expanding on a topic of the course. It is due in the appropriate Drop Box by 5PM on Monday April 3. It should be about 8 pages long. It should be primarily based on one of the books (except the textbook) listed in the Sources section of this document, although you are should supplement your paper by using other sources. If you wish to write about another topic, discuss your idea with the coordinator and your tutor.
If you prefer, you may collaborate with one or more other PHY100S students and write a longer and more-detailed paper. In this case you must consult with your tutor and the course coordinator before beginning work on the paper.
The penalty for late papers is 5 marks out of 100 for each day that the paper
is late.
| PHY100S has "Drop Boxes" for each of our five tutors. Except for the first homework assignment, all homework and papers should be turned in by putting them in the appropriate box. The boxes are located in the basement of McLennan, at the foot of the stairway that has a bust of Newton on the first floor. |  |
Coordinator: Dr. David M. Harrison
Office: McLennan Labs, 60 St. George St., Room 121B (1st Floor North Wing)
Email: harrison AT physics.utoronto.ca
Telephone: 416 978 2977
Home Page: http://faraday.physics.utoronto.ca/~harrison
Office Hours:Wednesdays: 2 - 3PM
Fridays: 10 - 11AM
In addition to these hours, you are invited to call or email for an appointment. You also have a hunting license: any time you find me, if I have time I will be pleased to answer your questions.
Tutors:
Name Office Phone
A common problem for some students regards writing skills. The University of Toronto expects all students to write well, and provides many resources to help. A good place to start is:
http://www.utoronto.ca/writing/
The textbook for the course is: Art Hobson, Physics: Concepts and Connections, 3rd edition (Prentice-Hall, 2003).
For some topics of the course, there will also be supplementary notes.
In addition, here is a list of favorite books which you may find helpful in exploring the topics of the course in more detail. Unless otherwise noted, they should all be readily available both from the library and any quality bookstore.
Edwin Abbott, Flatland, a Romance of Many Dimensions (Dover, 1952). Written circa 1884, this book will be used to illustrate our difficulties in visualising the four-dimensional nature of spacetime by following A. Square, a two-dimensional being, as he tries to visualise the third dimension. A very funny book.
J.S. Bell, Speakable and unspeakable in quantum mechanics (Cambridge University Press, 1988). This book by the man responsible for one of the two most significant intellectual revolutions of the 20th century, in my opinion (have you heard of him? can you guess who I think the other is?), includes a number of truly masterful articles for the layman, side-by-side with more technical pieces. In "Bertlmann's Socks", Bell explains the central idea of quantum weirdness with utter clarity. Sadly, this book is out of print.
David Bohm and B.J. Hiley, The Undivided Universe, an Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Theory (Routledge, 1993). We will be discussing Bohm extensively. This is his master work. Written for physicists, some parts are nonetheless accessible by a non-technical audience. Bohm's Wholeness and the Implicate Order is at a level more suitable for the typical PHY100 student, but only discusses his thinking up to 1980.
William R Everdell, The First Moderns (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1997). Einstein, Seurat, Joyce, Planck, Picasso, and more all rolled into a discussion of the rise of modernism around the beginning of the 20th century. Everdell is sort of an intellectual's James Burke, whom you may know from his television series Connections.
Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law (MIT, 1965). Nobel Prize winner Feynman was also a master teacher. This book is based on a series of lectures he gave at Cornell University in 1964.
Martin Gardner, The New Ambidextrous Universe (Dover, 2005). A substantial revision of the author's well-known work on mirror symmetry and asymmetry, this volume explores the two fundamental scientific discoveries of the past century: the asymmetric DNA helix and the overthrow of parity (left-right symmetry) in particle physics.
Martin Gardiner, ed., Great Essays in Science (Prometheus, 1994). This book for me [AS] has always been the ultimate example of how science can be properly communicated -- the writers are so talented that even the most apparently uninteresting topics are made gripping.
James Gleick, Chaos, Making a New Science (Penguin, 1987). Note that the title of this book says "Science" not "Physics". Gleick is correct, but much work on chaos occurs in physics departments.
James Gleick, Isaac Newton (Pantheon, 2003). Brilliant, secretive and nasty, Newton towers over the development of the mechanistic worldview we call Classical Physics. This sensitive biography places his work in the context of the society of the time and his troubled personality.
Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe (Norton, 1999). Chapters 2, 3 and 4 are excellent introductions to Special Relativity, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics respectively. If there were additional chapters dealing with a few more topics from our syllabus, this book could be a textbook for the course. Instead, most of the book is an excellent discussion of superstring theory.
Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (Bantam, 1988). Hawking, suffering from terrible physical disabilities, is just as brilliant as the press would have us believe. One goal of this course is to make this book more accessible. Sadly, a former tutor was completely correct when he proposed the following multiple choice question for a test:
Stephen Hawking is:
- A lousy writer.
Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams (Pantheon, 1993). Lightman is a physicist who is also head of the Creative Writing Laboratory at M.I.T. Here is presents a number of dreams that Einstein could have been having while developing the special theory of relativity in 1905.
Alan Lightman, Great Ideas in Physics (McGraw-Hill, 2000). This is the 2nd book by Lightman in this list. If you are not totally put off by some very gentle mathematics this source is recommended.
Martin Rees, Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe (Phoenix, 2003). This book is about cosmology, and specifically the manner in which our universe is constructed. The basic premise is that six dimensionless numbers govern the state of our universe so precisely that if any of them changed by even a tiny amount the result would be the impossibility of life, as we know it.
Alan D. Sokal and Jean Bricmont, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science (Picador; 1999) This book was written in the aftermath of the controversial "Sokal hoax", in which physicist Alan Sokal wrote an article of utter nonsense (mis-)using a lot of scientific jargon and convinced a sociology journal to publish it. He and Bricmont here give a detailed discussion of some interesting issues in the sociology of science, and in the way scientific ideas and concepts are borrowed (and sometimes distorted) by philosophers and social scientists.
Marie-Louise von Franz, Number and Time, Reflections Leading Towards a Unification of Psychology and Physics (Rider, 1974). von Franz was a student and collaborator of C.G. Jung for 25 years. Here she explores how "mind" connects with "matter" at the most fundamental level.
Gary Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters (Perennial Classics, 2001). A lovely overview of the new physics. Wu Li is the Chinese phrase for physics; it also means "my way," "enlightenment," "nonsense," and "dirty carp."
Some of the above annotations are by Prof. Aephraim Steinberg, who coordinates the Fall version of PHY100.
PHY100S keeps marks and tutorial assignments in the STORM database. You may access this database to check your marks and tutorial group. The address is:
Note that the address is case-sensitive and ends in a trailing slash. You will need a login and password to access the site. They are:
Login: your student number
Password: your last (family) name, as it appears on your student card. It is case-sensitive: do not use lower case letters in place of upper-case ones. Note that some student cards can be a bit confusing about upper and lower-case letters. Those cards would indicate that my last name is:
HARRISON
which is supposed to show that it is in fact:
Harrison
Here are some sites on Physics:
Physics Virtual Bookshelf: http://www.upscale.utoronto.ca/PVB/PVB.html
The Physics section of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics
The Particle Adventure: http://particleadventure.org/particleadventure/
String Theory: http://superstringtheory.com/
Animations are useful for many students in visualising the concepts. Here are some sites:
Flash animations: http://www.upscale.utoronto.ca/PVB/Harrison/Flash/index.html
More Flash animations: http://www.cs.sbcc.cc.ca.us/~physics/di-home.html
Flash and Java animations: http://www.colorado.edu/physics/phet/index.html
We will be using pdf format files, read with the Acrobat reader, and Flash animations, which use the Flash player. They are available free from the links below:
Getting the latest Acrobat Reader: http://www.adobe.com
Getting the latest Flash player: http://www.macromedia.com
