Course Meeting Times
Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session
Subject Description
This course explores the changing roles of physics and physicists during the 20th century. Ranges from relativity theory and quantum mechanics to high-energy physics and cosmology. Examines the development of modern physics within shifting institutional, cultural, and political contexts, such as physics in Imperial Britain, Nazi Germany, US efforts during World War II, and physicists' roles during the cold war.
Subject Requirements
This is a Communications Intensive (CI-M) subject for physics majors. As a CI subject, there will be a heavy emphasis upon writing and oral communication. There will be three papers assigned for a total of 20-24 pages of writing over the course of the semester. Students will revise and resubmit their second papers, to give them an opportunity to work on specific writing skills before preparing the final paper. Details of the paper assignments will be circulated in class.
Grading
| ACTIVITIES | PERCENTAGES |
|---|---|
| Paper 1 | 25% |
| Paper 2 | 30% |
| Paper 3 | 35% |
| Participation | 10% |
Calendar
| WEEKLY TOPICS | SES # | SESSION TOPICS | KEY DATES |
|---|---|---|---|
| Introduction and Background | |||
| Week 1: The Nineteenth-Century Legacy | 1 | Introductory Lecture | |
| 2 | Maxwell, Electrodynamics, and Cambridge Wranglers | ||
| Einstein: Relativity, Quanta, and the Philosopher-Scientist | |||
| Week 2: The Rise of Theoretical Physics | 3 | Mechanical and Electrodynamical World Pictures | |
| 4 | Special Relativity and the Ether | ||
| Week 3: Philosophy, Experiment, and Special Relativity | 5 | Einstein and Experiment | |
| 6 | Reception of Special Relativity | ||
| Week 4: From the Special to the General Theory | 7 | The Origins of General Relativity | Paper 1 due |
| Week 5: First Stirrings of Quantum Theory | 8 | Rethinking Light | |
| 9 | Rethinking Matter | ||
| Week 6: Emergence of Quantum Mechanics | 10 | Matrices and Uncertainty | |
| 11 | Waves and Probabilities | ||
| Week 7: The Contexts of Quanta | 12 | Quantum Mechanics in Weimar Germany, Interwar US | |
| 13 | Bell's Theorem and Entanglement | Paper 2 due | |
| Oppenheimer: Physics, Physicists, and the State | |||
| Week 8: Bomb Physics, Here and There | 14 | Physics under Hitler: Deutsche Physik and the bomb | |
| 15 | Film: The Day After Trinity | ||
| Week 9: Physics on the Front | 16 | Wartime physics in the US: Radar and the Bomb | |
| 17 | Secrecy and security in the nuclear age | ||
| Week 10: Cold War Physics | 18 | From "atomic secrets" to the anti-ballistic missile debate | |
| 19 | Film: The Decision to Build the H-Bomb | Paper 2 revision due | |
| Week 11: Big Science | 20 | The Rise of Big Science | |
| Feynman and Postwar Theory | |||
| Week 12: Particles and Fields | 21 | The Conservative Revolution: QED and Renormalization | |
| 22 | The Challenge to Field Theory | ||
| 23 | Quarks, Gauge Fields, and the Rise of the Standard Model | ||
| Week 13: Standard Models | 24 | The Birth of Particle Cosmology | |
| Week 14: Cosmology and Unification | 25 | Inflation and Superstrings | |
| 26 | Course summary | Paper 3 due | |