Mon 15:40-17:30 P1 & Wed 15:40-17:30 P1
(*) All lectures and exams will be face-to-face.
Tue 16:30-17:30 P311 (Instructor)
Thu14:40-15:30 P328 (TA)
(**) In-person visits at other times will not be admitted.
Concepts of Modern Physics, Arthur Beiser, 6th Edition, McGraw-Hill, 2003
Make sure to read syllabus carefully. See also METU Rules and Regulations Governing Undergraduate Studies.
Grading: in-class assignments (ICA) 30%, Midterm (MT) 30%, Final Exam (F) 40% (Total 100).
Letter grades: AA (90), BA (85), BB (80), CB (75), CC(70), DC (65), DD(60), FD(50), FF (0)
Class attendance and participation is mandatory for a passing grade independent of exam results.
By registration, you are assumed to accept the code of ethics & core values of METU and commit to maintain academic honesty and integrity for this course.
Any form of academic misconduct, including cheating in assignments and exams, is prohibited.
Relativity (Ch1) Lecture notes
Feb 17 Course overview (video)
Feb 19 Time dilation, length contraction (video) Muon lifetime, simultaneity (video)
Feb 24 Relativistic Doppler effect (video) Lorentz transformation and invariant space-time (video)
Feb 26 Relativistic velocity, momentum, mass, energy(video) Relativistic Newton's 2nd law, kinetic energy (video)
Mar 03 Energy, mometum relation, massless particles (video) In-class Assigment #1
Particle properties of light (Lecture notes) and wave properties of matter (Lecture notes) (Ch 2, 3)
Mar 05 Electromagnetic waves and blackbody radiation (video), Photoelectric effect (video)
Mar 10 X-rays, Compton scattering (video), Gamma rays, pair production (video),
Mar 12 de Broglie relation, matter waves (video) Particle diffraction in Davisson-Germer experiment (video)
Mar 17 Heisenberg uncertainty principle (video)
Atomic Structure (Ch 4) Lecture notes
Mar 19 Atom, nucleus and electron orbits, Atomic spectra (video), Bohr model (video)
Mar 19 Correspondence principle, Frank-Hertz Experiment, Laser (video) In-class Assigment #2
Quantum Mechanics (Ch 5) Lecture notes
Mar 24 Wave function, Schrodinger equation (video), Linearity, superposition particle in a box (video)
Mar 26 Orthogonality, completeness, symmetry (video) finite square well (video)
Mar 31 National Holiday
Apr 07 Quantum tunneling (video)
Mathematica codes
Quantum Theory of the Hydrogen Atom (Ch 6) Lecture notes
Apr 09 Quantum harmonic oscillator (video) Schrodinger equation in 3D, separation of variables (video)
Apr 14 Separation of variables in a central potential (video)
Midterm (Apr. 16 15:30-17:30 P1)
Apr 21 Quantum numbers n, l m, angular momentum, Zeeman effect (video)
Apr 21 Hydrogenic wavefunctions (video)
Apr 23 National holiday
Apr 28 Radiative transitions, selection rules (video)
Mathematica codes
Many-Electron Atoms (Ch 7) Lecture notes
Apr 30 Spin angular momentum (video), exchange symmetry, Fermions and Bosons, Pauli exclusion principle (video) In-class Assigment #3
May 05 Spin orbit coupling, addition of angular momentum (video)
May 07 Periodic table, atomic structure (video) Transition elements. x-rays (video)
Lecture notes on angular momentum (part 1, part 2)
Molecules (Ch 8) Lecture notes
May 12 Bonding, electron sharing, Hydrogen ion (video) Complex molecules, hybridization (video)
May 14 In-class Assigment #4
May 19 National Holiday
Statistical Mechanics (Ch. 9) Lecture notes
➤May 21 Molecular spectra rotations and vibrations (video) Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, equipartition theorem (video)
May 26 Bose-Einstein and Fermi-Dirac distributions (video) Photon gas, derivation of Plank's radiation formula (video)
May 28 Einstein A and B coefficients, laser (video) Specific heat, phonon gas and electron gas (video)
Final Exam: Please check METU SIS for details.
Makeup Exam: Information will be emailed to eligible students.
(***)The content outlined is subject to change depending on our pace in this semester.
Barton Zwiebach's Quantum Physics I lectures from MIT
Some lectures are a little more advanced than this course but most of them are easy to follow.
David Kaiser's Einstein, Oppenheimer, Feynman: Physics In The 20th Century lectures from MIT
Less technical and more entertaining with historical aspects but still contains important physics