PHZ3400 Syllabus

Class Information

• Lectures: M W F 12:20-1:10pm; HCB 317

• Professor: Vladimir Dobrosavljevic, 611 Keen Building or A315 MagLab, 644-9755 or 644-5693, vlad@magnet.fsu.edu

• Office hours: Friday 11-12am, or by appointment. You are also welcome to contact me whenever you have questions.

• Prerequisite: Calculus-based General Physics (PHY 2048 and 2049), and Modern Physics (PHY3101).

Description

This is an upper-level undergraduate course, with the goal to explain the concepts of modern Condensed Matter Physics. The emphasis of the courses is equally on conceptual grasp of the subject as well as on problem solving. It will cover structural, thermal, electrical, magnetic, and optical properties of both solids and some "soft" materials (e.g. liquid crystals, bio-materials, etc). It will describe the physics foundation of many modern technologies that have transformed our daily life, discoveries which would not exist without our deep understanding of "Quantum Magic".

The key component of this course is the collaborative student contribution to the course Wiki-textbook. Each team of students is responsible for BOTH writing the assigned chapter AND editing chapters of others. Instead of writing traditional-style term papers, students will produce Wiki-contributions to various special topics, and then use thee pages to present what they discovered to the class. Cross-linking these pages with the exponentially growing number of resources on the Web will produce a new generation of learning tools: a veritable revolution in teaching physics and science in general.

Textbooks

• Main Texts:

1. Soft Condensed Matter, by Richard A. L. Jones (Oxford University Press, 2007).
2. Solid State Physics, by J. R. Hook and H. E. Hall (Wiley, 2007).

• Other useful texts:

1. Chaikin and Lubensky (add details)
2. Mermin and Aschroft (add details)
3. Kittel (add details)

Class Materials

• Lecture Notes (Wiki-written by students!))

• Homework Assignments and Solutions (also by students!)