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This web page is no longer being maintained. The "official" web page for this course is now located at: http://portal.utoronto.ca | |
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"Like the meridians as they approach the poles, science, philosophy and religion are bound to converge as they draw nearer to the whole."
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PHY201 concentrates on "modern" Physics, the change in our worldview of the physical universe that largely began with Einstein in 1905. It assumes no background in science.
Let's get clear right now a topic of some concern to many students: mathematics. In PHY201S 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. Although we will not use the language of mathematics, it is nonetheless the "real deal," and we will not be afraid to confront the difficult questions.
Although our main focus will be on the Physics, in place of mathematics we will use a number of analogies and also place the concepts in a social context. Analogies will be drawn from psychology, art, literature and religious philosophy.
This "home page" has the following sections:
We may discuss some of these topics in depth.
What is the structure of space and time? How does that structure interact with the matter that exists in both space and time? Why do I often write spacetime as one word?
What happens in the world that allows symmetric structures? Perhaps an equivalent question: what happens in our minds that perceives symmetric structures? What do we really see when we look in a mirror? Mirrors are often not allowed in Zen monasteries. This is also a good point to introduce notions of antimatter.
What distinguishes the future from the past? Is there such a moment as the present? This topic can easily lead us to a discussion of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, or Prigogine's work on the emergence of structures, or evolution. The topic of chaos could dominate this section; if so then the effect of computing technology on the way science is carried will necessarily also be part of the discussion.
Is there a reality separate from its observation by sentient beings? Does the same cause necessarily lead to the same effect? We will discuss why, just as I tend to write spacetime as one word, I also write worldview as a single word. I would like to carry the discussion as far as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox, Bell's theorem, and Bohm's holographic paradigm for reality.
This topic is usually called "Elementary Particle Physics", which I believe pre-judges the whole question: it assumes that there are such things as elementary particles. In addition to discussing the quark model of elementary particle physics, we shall discuss an alternative view often called the bootstrap. The more modern manifestation of the bootstrap, string theory, will also be explored.
Shortly after each class a summary of the class including links to any animations, supplementary notes, etc. will be prepared. In the table below, a link to the summary will appear in the Summary column.
| Class, Date | Principal Topics | Summary |
|---|---|---|
1: Tues. Jan. 9 |
Light: a wave, a particle, or what? |
Dr. David M. Harrison, Senior Lecturer, Dept. of Physics
| What | Date | Marks | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
Homework |
From time to time |
5 |
Five assignments, each worth one mark. Each will be marked pass/fail. |
Test |
mid-February |
20 |
A 50-minute test on the material of the term so far. |
Outline and Bibliography |
mid-March |
10 |
The outline and bibliography for the paper that you will write. The paper is described immediately below. |
Paper |
towards the end of March |
30 |
A 10-page paper investigating a topic of this course in more detail. A class presentation may be substituted for the paper. |
Final Exam |
TBA |
35 |
There will be extensive supplementary notes, prepared by the coordinator. They will be linked to from the class summary where that material was first discussed. In addition, in this sub-section I provide alternative links to those notes in the order in which they were released.
There is an issue regarding the format of these notes. For many students, reading this sort of material in hardcopy is more effective than reading on a screen. The pdf format is excellent for delivering material that will be printed and read in hardcopy. For reading on a screen, html is far better than pdf. Thus for many of the notes, versions in both html and pdf are available. Both versions will appear in a separate window.
| Title | Topics | Links |
|---|---|---|
| The Feynman Double Slit |
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html |
In addition, here are some books which you may find interesting and/or useful:
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.
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 PHY201 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.
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.
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 string 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. Half of it deals with relativity and quantum mechanics, which are both topics of this course. If you are not totally put off by some very gentle mathematics this source is highly recommended.
Lee Smolin, The Trouble With Physics (Houghton Mifflin, 2006). Brian Greene's book is very pro-string theory. Here a former string theorist discusses what is wrong with the idea.
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.