PHYS 290: Quantum

News:

• Sorry this is very rushed but here is a Midterm II practice set.
• Guide 6 solutions are posted.
• Guide 7 is now due at 8 PM on Sunday Nov 1.
• Midterm II is next week
• We'll be using gradescope for probem sets. You can use the code EBR3XV to submit your solutions directly in gradescope. They are due on Gradescope by 10 AM Friday morning.

Course Info:

Lab Info:

Problem Sets (pdf):

Extras:

• Here is a barrier/tunneling Phet sim. It runs in Java so some installation may be necessary...
• The 2025 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded for "for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantization in an electric circuit" and was discussed in an APS news story on the discoveries.
• Check out this remarkable video report by Veritasium on the intriguing connection (analogy? somethingmore?) between a droplet bounding on a wave and the mechanics of quantum waves. +3 bonus problem set points for looking up and reading literature on this and meeting with me (and others?) to talk about it. Thanks to Roccio for sending the link along!
• The video of an interference experiment done at Hitachi by Tonomura et.al. Here's a link to a Hitachi website with an explanation of the experiment. The history of this experiment. It was voted to be one of the "top 10 beautiful experiments" as determined by readers of Physics World.
• Francis Halzen won the 2026 physics Nobel Prize for the idea for the IceCube observatory and for the resulting data on neutrinos. More on the science of IceCube.
• A quick, two page Dirac notation intro.
• Plot from the C60 interference experiment of Arndt et al, reference 35 in this paper: Am J Phys 71 (2003) 324.
• The front cover
• Data from the He interference experiments: case 1 case 2 (pdf) time development of interference pattern (pdf)
• What was the problem on the polarization in the sky? Honeybees (and other insects) use this for navigation. This paper reports on an experiment to see how bees navigate using polarization and communicate directions (!)
• The PhET photoelectric effect webpage. (PhET's are nifty online physics simulations hosted by UC Boulder.)
• The moment of code in class on Monday September 7: example code for plotting (py) and example code for gathering data (py).
• The visible portion of the electromagnetic specctrum with wavelengths (pdf).
• Animation codes for the one, two, and three slit intereference patterns. Thanks to Brian Collett for these!
• On intsalling python (Thanks to Megan!)
• Plots from the Aspect et al single photon interference experiment.
• A webpage for python play.
• Single and double slit intensity plots (pdf).
• You can view Feynman's Messenger lecture with transcript (filmed by the BBC)! The full set of six lectures are available from CalTech.

Copenhagen Project Resources:

• A re-formated version of the Peierls-Frisch memorandum.
• Bernstein's article [Am. J. Phys. 79 (2011) 440] on the memorandum.
• Serber's Los Alamos primer.
• More on the 1938 Christmas discovery of Meitner and Frisch. Frisch visited his aunt Lise Meitner who had fled Nazi Germany and was in exile in Sweden.
• The PhET fission demo
• Snippets of the Farm Hall transcripts hosted by AIP. The transcripts are available in ``Operation Epsilon: the Farm Hall transcripts" (Burke Q141.O556 1993)
• On YouTube you can see a Kennedy Center performance of Copenhagen and a 2002 PBS film adaptation. Thanks to Syd for these links!

Last modified 30 October 2026