Module Outlines
Here are brief outlines of all the modules that may be taken by current 3rd year physics students.
Term 1
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The project is designed to provide you with the opportunity to make an in depth investigation of a particular area of physics in collaboration with your project supervisor.
This module is available only to BSc students
ORGANISER: Geetha Balakrishnan
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Employers look for many things in would-be employees. Sometimes they will be looking for specific knowledge, but often they will be more interested in more general skills frequently referred to as transferable skills. One such transferable skill is the ability to communicate effectively, both orally and in writing. Over the past two years you have had considerable experience in writing for an academic audience in the form of your laboratory reports. The aim of this module is to introduce you to the different approaches required to write for other audiences.
This module is available only to BSc students
ORGANISER: Michael Pounds
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The basic principles of quantum mechanics will be applied to a range of problems in atomic physics. The intrinsic property of spin will be introduced and its relation to the indistinguishability of identical particles in quantum mechanics discussed. Perturbation theory and variational methods will be described and applied to several problems. The hydrogen and helium atoms will be analysed and the ideas that come out from this work will be applied to obtain a good qualitative understanding of the periodic table.
LECTURER: Martin Lees
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The diffusion, convection, chemical reactions and the interaction with living organisms which take place in or at the boundaries of the atmosphere determine the weather patterns we observe. The module will look at some of these processes. The module will also treat the phenomenon of cloud-formation and the role of the earth's rotation in determining flow patterns in the atmosphere.
LECTURER: David Leadley
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The module builds on the first and second year modules on electromagnetism by using Maxwell's equations to describe the generation and propagation of electromagnetic waves and their interaction with matter and, in particular, plasmas. The module will introduce at the start the magnetic vector potential, A, which is defined so that the magnetic field B=curl A. Although this appears at first sight to be a technical device, it will prove very useful in later modules particularly in quantum mechanics. We will see that it is also the natural variable to consider when exploring how electric and magnetic fields are affected under Lorentz transformations (special relativity).
The radiation (EM-waves) emitted by accelerating charges will be described in more detail using retarded potentials (these are just time-dependent analogs of the usual electrostatic potential and its vector equivalent used to describe magnetic fields) which have the wave-like nature of light built in. The scattering of light by free electrons (Thompson scattering) and by bound electrons (Rayleigh scattering) will also be described. Understanding the bound electron problem led Rayleigh to his celebrated explanation of why the sky is blue and why sunlight appears redder at sunrise and sunset.
LECTURER: Sandra Chapman
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This module should help you develop the C programming skills beyond the level of the introductory second year module PX270 C Programming. The module will consist of some lectures and a series of programming exercises designed to illustrate important aspects of program design. The module will also cover some important numerical techniques used in data processing in physics. Aspects relating to the reliability, accuracy and efficiency of these techniques will be discussed, as well as other issues such as making software user friendly, and data transfer between platforms. The module will be assessed on the basis of the exercises completed during the module and some project work.
LECTURER: Ben McMillan
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The laboratory is designed to enable you to further develop your experimental skills and group working skills on some project like experiments.
This module is available only to MPhys students
ORGANISER: Oleg Petrenko
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One third of this module is on the calculus of variations and two thirds on complex variables. The calculus of variations is concerned with the minimisation of integrals over sets of differentiable functions. Such integrals crop up in many contexts. For example, the ground state wavefunction of a quantum system minimises the expectation value of the energy. The classical equations of motion for both particles and fields can be obtained by minimising what is called the action functional (which may be familiar if you took Hamiltonian Mechanics).
Requiring functions of complex variables to be analytic (differentiable with respect to their complex argument in some domain) turns out to constrain such functions very strongly. As we will see: only the constant function is differentiable everywhere, analytic functions are actually equal to their Taylor series and not just approximated by them, a function that is once differentiable is differentiable infinitely many times ... . Complex differentiable functions are clean, they are fun and they are important in physics. For example, response functions like the dielectric response function are analytic functions with the domain in which the function is analytic being related to causality.
LECTURER: Nicholas d'Ambrumenil
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Fluctuations play an essential role in nature. Statistical mechanics is, in essence, a description of the role played by these fluctuations. It allows us to understand the physics of such seemingly diverse problems as diffusion, phase transitions and Fermi-Dirac and Bose-Einstein statistics. We will also give examples from Polymer physics where the behaviour of the polymer chains is driven by configurational entropy, rather than energy.
LECTURER: Marco Polin
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Quantum and statistical mechanics are the basis for describing the physics of solids, and in this module we will apply these ideas to problems in condensed matter. We will understand the role of the microscopic structure in determining the properties of macroscopic samples and be able to explain magnetic and conductivity phenomena, and how to measure these experimentally.
LECTURER: Rachel Edwards
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Plasmas are 'fluids' of charged particles. The motion of these charged particles (usually electrons) is controlled by the electromagnetic fields which are imposed from outside and by the fields which the moving charged particles themselves set up. This module will cover the key equations which describe such plasmas. It will examine some predictions derived on the basis of these equations and compare these with results from laboratory experiments and with observations from in situ measurements of solar system plasmas and remote observations of astrophysical systems. It will also be important to look at instabilities in plasmas and how electromagnetic waves interact with the plasmas.
LECTURER: Valery Nakariakov
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To module aims to illustrate how important physical principles, from different areas of physics, can be developed to yield a description of complex physical systems like galaxies. The module should explore some of the properties of galaxies, which yield insights into their formation, evolution and ongoing processes.
LECTURER: Elizabeth Stanway
Term 2
A number of modules taught by outside departments continue from Term 1. PX385 Condensed Matter Physics also continues from Term 1.
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In recent years considerable progress has been made in the application of physics and physical measurement techniques to medicine. This module concentrates on five major areas of medical physics: X-rays, radionuclide imaging, ultrasound, neuroelectromagnetism and radiotherapy. The aim of the module is to demonstrate the application of basic physical principles to these important areas of medical physics.
LECTURER: Michael Pounds
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To introduce the most important physical processes and detection methods required for understanding the broad band emission spectra of astrophysical objects from the radio regime to X-rays and gamma-rays, to provide a basis for further studies in observational astrophysics.
LECTURER: Boris Gänsicke
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You have probably heard about the use of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) in medical diagnosis. In fact, magnetic resonance in nuclei - Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) - and in electrons - Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR) - had existed as powerful tools used across science for several decades before being applied in the medical arena. This module will describe the physics behind the magnetic resonance techniques - NMR and EPR are excellent experimental evidence for the existence of nuclear and electron spin - and will show why these techniques have found numerous applications in fields as diverse as medicine, materials science, chemistry and biology.
LECTURER: Andy Howes
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This module shows how the properties of the stable nucleus can be understood in terms of elementary models using basic physics from earlier modules, but with the introduction of the strong nuclear force. It is shown that the main features of the decay of unstable nuclei can also be understood on the basis of these ideas, but that a further interaction, the weak interaction, has to be postulated.
LECTURER: Michal Kreps
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The researching, evaluation and presentation of scientific information are important skills that you used in the 2nd year Physics Skills module. This project is designed to further develop these skills.
Your class will be divided into groups each of about six members. Each group will then be assigned a topic to be researched and reported on, and they will also each be allocated a member of Academic Staff who will act as a both a mentor and an assessor. The group will then meet regularly (at least weekly on a formal basis but probably more regularly informally) to assign individual tasks and collate information. Towards the end of the ten weeks you will give an oral presentation on the part of the problem you have investigated to the rest of your group (and perhaps others). The group will then organise the production of the final written report which will be assessed.
The overall assessment will be based on the oral presentation and the report mark, as apportioned by the group members.
This module is available only to MPhys students
ORGANISER: Sandra Chapman
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This module follows on from PX264 Physics of Fluids. The lectures will provide the student with a solid background in the mathematical description of fluid dynamics. You will be introduced to the method of deducing the equations of motion from conservation laws (mass, momentum, energy), the value of dimensional analysis in finding scale-invariant solutions and universal turbulence spectra, role of the gravity and rotation in atmospheric and oceanic dynamics, and deriving approximate equations of motion (e.g. boundary layer equations).
An important aim of the module is to provide an appreciation of the complexities and beauty of fluid motion. This will be brought out in lectures, computer demonstrations and visualisations, web pages. Students are also encouraged to attend seminars on fluid dynamics put on by the Fluid Dynamics Research Centre (Engineering Dept and Maths) and by MIR@W (Maths) where they can learn about current research by physicists, engineers and mathematicians.
LECTURER: James Sprittles
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The development of lasers during the last thirty years has been extremely rapid and with the appearance of semiconductor lasers they have become very important in optoelectronic communication. This module combines the treatment of the basic physics of laser action in the various types of laser which now exist with a coverage of their applications in optoelectronics.
LECTURER: Steve Dixon
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Questions about the origin of the universe, where it is going and how it may get there are the domain of cosmology. One of the questions we will address is whether the universe will continue to expand or ultimately contract. Relevant experimental data include those on the Cosmic Microwave Radiation, the distribution of galaxies and the distribution of mass in the universe. We will discuss the implications of these in some detail. The module will outline Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and the setting up of Einstein's field equations. This is the 'full' theory of relativity. It starts from the apparently simple Principle of Equivalence, which states (roughly speaking) that the laws of physics are the same in all frames of reference including those accelerating in a gravitational field (special relativity is special as it is restricted to frames moving at constant speed with respect to one another).
The cosmological problem will be approached through the Cosmological Principle. This will lead us to the Robertson-Walker metric, Hubble's law and the Cosmological Red Shift. The application of the Einstein equations is then shown to lead irrevocably to the Big Bang Model, with singular behaviour at the origin of the universe. The evolution of the Primeval fireball and the synthesis of Helium is described and the module concludes with a discussion of gravitational collapse, event horizons and black holes.
LECTURER: Andrew Levan
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The module introduces non-linear phenomena in science. Examples from physics, chemistry and biology will be discussed (little previous knowledge of these subjects will be assumed).
A discussion of phase transitions and the elements of bifurcation theory will be followed by the theory of first and second order non-linear differential equations. Such phenomena as simple attractors (limit cycles) will be discussed.
It will be shown how non-linear systems can `self-organize' to produce structures which have interesting time and space dependences. The main ideas from the theory of chaos will also be introduced using one-dimensional difference equations as working examples.
LECTURER: Sandra Chapman
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The Standard Model (SM) describes elementary particles (the quarks, leptons, and bosons) using gauge theories. Although a full quantitative description of the SM requires the machinery of quantum field theory and is not easily accessible, it is quite possible to develop a good qualitative understanding of what is meant by a gauge theory and how this contrains the predictions of the model. A lot follows from symmetry. We will look at Noether's theorem (for any continuous symmetry property there is a conserved quantity, eg conservation of charge and invariance under gauge transformations are the same thing), flavour symmetry, parity (P) and others. We will show how these aspects of the model are tested against experiment. We will also look at the reasons for quark confinement and the concept of a momentum-transfer dependent coupling, the Higgs mechanism, quark mixing and questions about unification.
LECTURER: Sinead Farrington
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