Senior Freshman Programme 2013/2014 - Trinity College Dublin

Physics
Tuition will consist of lectures, practicals and tutorials in physics at
intermediate level. Lectures are given on oscillations, optics, current
electricity, thermodynamics, special relativity, nuclear physics, quantum
physics, and astronomy. Practicals include set experiments, computational
exercises and group study projects. This tuition may only be taken by
students reading the appropriate elements of Senior Freshman
mathematics:
Lectures in Physics in SF year are given in two modules (Classical Physics
and Modern Physics). Students must take both modules, comprising
Lectures, Laboratory Classes, Group Study Project, and Small Group
Tutorials (see below)
PY2P10 Classical Physics
10 credits
(Co-ordinator: Prof Graham Cross: graham.cross@tcd.ie)
This module combines four elements of classical physics as follows:
• Current Electricity: Theory of metallic conduction, resistors, power
dissipation, voltage dividers, voltage and current sources, Thevenin's
theorem and Norton's theorem. Capacitors and R-C circuits. Review of
magnetic field and magnetic force. The Hall effect, Ampere's Law and
displacement current. Review of electromagnetic induction, mutual
inductance and self-inductance. R-L circuits and L-R-C circuits. AC
circuits, phasor diagrams, reactance, resonance, transformers and
complex representation of reactance. R-C integration and
differentiation, R-C low- and high-pass filters and active filters.
Introduction to semiconductor devices: doping, p-n junction,
rectification, and bipolar junction transistor.
• Oscillations: Review of simple harmonic motion. Forced and damped
oscillations. Resonance. Two coupled oscillators, modes and normal
coordinates. Many coupled oscillators. Transition to continuous
systems. Waves. Nonlinear behaviour. Anharmonic behaviour.
• Physical Optics: Light as a wave. Plane waves. Light in matter:
electron oscillator for a dielectric. Refractive index and dispersion.
Optical properties of metals. Polarisation of light. Linear, circular and
elliptical polarisation. Birefringence in uniaxial crystals. Polarisation
components. Polarisation by reflection, scattering. Retarders and
analysis of polarised light. Angular momentum of the photon.
Interference and coherence - complex degree of coherence. Visibility of
fringes, temporal coherence and spectral bandwidth, spatial coherence.
Interference-wavefront and amplitude splitting interferometers, types
and location of fringes, and applications of interferometry. Multiple
beam interference. Fabry-Perot interferometer. Diffraction - near-field
and far-field diffraction, Fourier treatment of far-field diffraction,
spatial filtering and image formation.
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