PHYS 227A: Elementary Mathematical Physics (Fall 2019)
MWF 10:30-11:20am PAA A118
TTH 10:30-11:20am PAA A102
Instructor: Silas Beane (silas at uw.edu) B457 OH: Monday, 2-3pm, M-Th, 11:30-12:30pm
TAs: Yiyun Dong (yiyund at uw.edu) OH: Mathematica tutorial on Fridays
Qirui Guo (guoqirui at uw.edu) OH: Mathematica tutorial on Fridays
Kristin Kellar (kkellar at uw.edu) B237 OH: Thursday, 3:30-4:30pm
Yinong Zhang (zhangyn at uw.edu) B229 OH: Wednesday, 12:30-1:30pm
Haoran Zhao (hrzhao at uw.edu) B225 OH: Tuesday, 1:30-2:30pm
Subject Matter
Applications of mathematics in physics with emphasis on the mechanics of particles and continuous systems. Develops and applies
computational methods, both analytic and numerical. Prerequisite: minimum 2.0 grade in PHYS 121, PHYS 122, and PHYS 123. Offered: ASp.
Texts
Our required text is:
"Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences," (3rd Edition, Wiley) by Mary L. Boas.
We will follow the ordering of material in this text, and draw most homework questions from it. Corrections to the text are available here. Note that solutions to some problems appear at the back of the book (and there is a companion volume to the previous edition which contains solutions to approximately 1/4 of the exercises, many of which are unchanged in the current edition).
Tentative Schedule
Course Organization
This course, together with the subsequent PHYS 228, aims to provide you with the mathematical tools needed to master physics at the UG level and, to a significant extent, at the first-year graduate level too. We will cover a lot of material, some of which you may have some prior experience with, but most of which is likely to be new, or at least applied in a new way. We will move quite fast, and it is imperative that you are organized and stay on top of the material. This means practice, practice and more practice. Weekly homeworks provide a minimal level of practice, and will include suggestions for additional problems not to be turned in. Weekly quizzes provide incentive to stay on track.
I keep a log of what has been covered, together with my lecture notes, on the daily coverage calendar shown below. This will also indicate any material not covered in lecture that you should read.
Holidays.
There will be no classes on Veteran's day (Monday Nov. 11th), or the Thanksgiving holiday (Thursday-Friday, Nov. 28th-29th).
Homework.
There will be weekly homework sets (starting in the second week), due on Wednesdays by the end of class. I will bring a box to class; they can also be placed in my mailbox in the physics office or under my office door (until 11:30am).
You are encouraged to discuss the assignments with classmates, but the solutions you turn in must be your own work.
Working on assignments in a timely fashion is a crucial part of the learning process. Late assignments will only be accepted by prearrangement, and only under exceptional circumstances.
Solutions will be posted on the HW link after class on Wednesdays.
Selected problems from each HW will be graded.
Regrade requests must be made by the end of the class session following that in which the HWs are returned, and must be made in writing on separate sheet of paper which is attached to the HW. There should be no additional writing on the HW itself.
Quizzes.
There will be weekly quizzes in class on Thursdays, starting in the second week. These will be based on the same material as the HWs turned in the previous day.
I expect the quizzes to take 20 minutes.
Regrade requests for quizzes follow the same procedure as for HWs.
Computer Mathematics
Basic use of computer mathematics programs is an integral part of this course, including some parts of lectures and some homework questions. You may use Mathematica, Maple, Matlab or Python. Students can now install Mathematica on their personally owned computers at no cost. See here for information about obtaining it. Mathematica may also be available on PCs in at various locations in the Physics building.
A student in the course previously discovered a very useful web site at Brigham Young University with a sequence of introductory Mathematica tutorials. I have obtained permission from its creators (Drs. Campbell, Colton and Hurley) to put a link here and they are happy for you to use the materials. I am grateful to them for sharing this resource.
Exams
There will be two midterms and a final exam.
The midterms will be on Thursday, October 24th and Thursday, November 21st.
The final exam is on Monday, December 9th from 8:30-10:20am in A118.
If you have to miss an exam due to a UW sponsored activity (e.g. traveling for a sports team) please contact me ASAP.
Exam rules will be discussed in class and posted on this web page closer to the exams.
I hope to spend part of the lecture period prior to each exam on a review.
Course Grade
First note that you will obtain a 0.0 grade unless you take at least one of the midterms and the final .
The course grade will be determined by scores on quizzes, homeworks and exams as follows. The homeworks will count for 20%. I will drop the lowest homework score in determining the overall sum, so that you can miss one homework without penalty. The remaining 80% will be determined in equal part by the quizzes (with the lowest quiz score dropped), the two midterms and the final, except that the final will count double and that the lowest score will dropped. If the final is the lowest score then only half of its score will be dropped.
In more detail, this is how the grade will be calculated:
Let HW=(Sum of HW scores-lowest HW score)/Max possible,
Q=(Sum of quiz scores-lowest quiz)/Max possible,
M1=midterm 1 score/50, M2=(midterm 2 score)/50, F=final score/100
(If I think an exam turns out to be significantly harder or longer than planned, I allow myself to rescale the scores on that exam, but will only do so to increase the scores, not to decrease them.)
Then Total Score=100*Max(HW+Q+M1+M2+F, HW+Q+M1+2*F, HW+Q+M2+2*F, HW+M1+M2+2*F)/5
(i.e. dropping lowest exam score with final "counting double" and HW always included.)
Total Score is your total score as a percentage.
I will set the required total score for obtaining a grade of 2.0 at 50% (or possibly below, but not above). The grade for obtaining a 4.0 will be approximately 95%, but will be varied according to my perception of the difficulty of the exams.
This policy means that you are not penalized if, e.g. for personal reasons, you miss a midterm. This allows me to enforce the policy that there are no makeup exams.
Useful Links
Professor Steve Ellis's notes for PHYS 227 from Autumn 2008.
Calendar
Religious Accommodations
Washington state law requires that UW develop a policy for accommodation of student absences or significant hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities. The UW’s policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation, is available at Religious Accommodations Policy (https://registrar.washington.edu/staffandfaculty/religious-accommodations-policy/). Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accommodations Request form (https://registrar.washington.edu/students/religious-accommodations-request/).