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General Physics is a two-semester introduction to classical physics for science majors. The first semester focuses on classical mechanics, including kinematics and dynamics in two and three dimensions, momentum, energy, and rotational motion. The second semester covers electricity and magnetism, wave mechanics, and optics. The course includes three hours of lecture and two hours of laboratory each week. Students must have taken or be currently enrolled in MATH 201 or equivalent.
General Physics is a two-semester introduction to classical physics for science majors. The first semester focuses on classical mechanics, including kinematics and dynamics in two and three dimensions, momentum, energy, and rotational motion. The second semester covers electricity and magnetism, wave mechanics, and optics. The course includes three hours of lecture and two hours of laboratory each week. Students must have taken or be currently enrolled in MATH 201 or equivalent.
The student is presented with the fundamentals of digital and analog circuit analysis. Among topics originally specific to analog circuits are DC circuit analysis using Kirchoff’s laws, mesh equations, transformations, the use of multimeters and oscilloscopes, AC circuit analysis using complex impedances, capacitors, and inductors, resonance, step function analysis, and transitions. Among the topics originally specific to digital analysis are simple logic gates, IC chips, Boolean algebra, adders, flip-flops, shift registers, and counters. After the fundamentals are covered, the emphasis shifts to circuit analysis involving knowledge of both perspectives. This course includes three hours of lecture and two hours of laboratory each week. (This course may be taken for credit as CPSC 222.)
This course is primarily intended for students with one year of calculus who want to develop, in a short time, a basic competence in each of the many areas of mathematics needed in junior to senior courses in physics and chemistry. Thus, it is intended to be accessible to sophomores (or freshmen with AP calculus from high school). Topics include ordinary and partial differential equations, vector analysis, Fourier series, complex numbers, eigenvalue problems, and orthogonal functions. (This course may be taken for credit as MATH 241.)
This course is a study of particle mechanics, central force motions, free oscillations, rotations about an axis, moving coordinates systems, conservation theorems, Lagrange’s equations, and Hamilton’s equations.
Topics in this course include electrostatics, magnetostatics, scalar and vector fields, Poynting’s vector, Laplace’s equation, and boundary value problems.
This course uses mathematical and physical reasoning to present the foundations of modem physics. It emphasizes the subjects of special relativity, kinetic theory, atomic theory, and introductory quantum mechanics on the level of the Schrodinger equation. The course is intended for chemistry, mathematics, physics, or pre-engineering majors.
This course explores the latest developments in the analysis of nonlinear systems using computer enhanced analysis and novel mathematical approaches to these systems. Emphasis is placed on the special case of nonlinear dynamics known as chaotic systems.
This course is a study of the physics of thermodynamic systems. Most of the course is devoted to the macroscopic properties of systems, including the first and second laws of thermodynamics, heat, entropy, imposed and natural constraints, equations of state, and applications. Statistical mechanics is briefly introduced to derive the large scale properties of systems from the microscopic behavior of their elements.
This course examines the properties of plasmas, a collection of charged particles that exhibit collective behavior, and which are much more common than the other phases of matter (solids, liquids, and gases) when the entire known universe is considered, and which are becoming increasingly common in modem technologies.
