A first course on contemporary physics by Dr Sabieh Anwar | PhysLab

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A first course on contemporary physics by Dr Sabieh Anwar

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Our freshmen (first year undergraduate) modern physics course at LUMS is offered to around three hundred students every year. I joyfully teach this course but this time, the challenge was immense. This I took upon myself. I wanted to introduce my students, of course most of them will never study physics again, to what happens in the modern physics laboratory. Some students had little background in physics or math and the course was definitely not meant to become a ‘physics for the poet’ or ‘physics for the president’ sail through. Rather I had to keep it rigorous, mathematically accurate and enticing enough to catch the average students’ attention, who are constantly derailed by the frivolities of social mediums, the bitter reality of taking a course in a subject that will be effortlessly shred away (physics does not continue thereafter) and the mental anarchy of grades and GPA’s. Nothing works in my favor here.

But those few students in class who constantly ask me about black holes, gravity, quantum computers, string theory, radiation, spacetime, many questions sparked by the timing of Stephen Hawking’s death, and I admit most questions I could not answer, instilled in me the desire to share with my students my own fascination about modern physics. Modern enough that it could be called contemporary! So my dealings in this course bear little similarities to a course that teaches “modern physics” as a vestige of some revolutionary defining experiments in the past performed about a century ago (Geiger and Marsden, Compton, J.J. Thomson and G.P. Thomson and Milikan’s photoelectric effect); rather it spans topics that are of interest to the modern mind and the modern practitioner. The easiest way for me to choose these topics were some recent Nobel Prizes in physics.

Now hopefully my students can walk away with a deep satisfaction that they could explain how quantum computers work, why lasers are coherent sources of radiation, what makes a laser similar to a Bose-Einstein condensate, how could you cool and trap atoms with the forces of radiation, how tunneling explains radioactivity, how “nano” is different from the “macro”, why “more is different”, how “confinement leads to quantization” and finally, how energy spreads to give us the laws of thermodynamics that can drive the universe. As always, I also tried to enliven the course with real in-class demonstrations. How refreshing it was for me personally to show levitating magnets, diffracting electrons from graphite, photons bending around razor blades and the valve action of semiconducting diodes!


 One of the biggest challenges was the absence of a textbook that spanned most of these contemporary movements in modern physics. But I made some effort in capturing these moments, blissful for me and I don’t know how much for my class, in the form of a video playlist of fifty-one hour-sized lectures on contemporary physics. Enjoy and do send me your feedback. I love to hear from you and how we could improve the experience in the future. The website that will help you navigate through this course is on physlab.org.

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/first-course-contemporary-physics-muhammad-sabieh-anwar/

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  • Home
  • About Us
    • Overview
    • Centre for Experimental Physics Education (CEPE)
    • Physlab Team
    • Alumni
    • Open Positions
    • Muhammad Sabieh Anwar (Personal)
  • Academics
    • Lab Courses
    • Lab-I (PHY 100/200)
    • Lab-II (PHY 300/500)
    • Ibn Sahl Corner for Optics
    • Smart Physics
    • Single Photon Quantum Mechanics Lab
    • Chasing Cosmic Ray Muons at Physlab
    • Stories
    • Physics Studio
    • Research Stories
    • Class Activities
    • Courses Taught
    • Class Demonstrations
    • PhysDiary
    • Health and Safety
    • Lab Safety
    • Workplace Organization
  • Research
    • Research Themes
    • Research Internships
    • Research Stories
      • International Young Physicists’ Tournament (IYPT) 2019
      • International Young Physicists’ Tournament (IYPT) 2018
      • International Young Physicists’ Tournament (IYPT) 2016
    • Group Meetings
    • Grants
    • Theses and Reports
    • Scientific Publications
    • Invited Talks (Selected)
  • Outreach
    • The Scientific Mind Through the Eyes of a Physics Experimenter
    • National Laboratory Immersion Program
      • First Lahore 2012
      • Second Sukkur 2013
      • Third Lahore 2014
      • Fourth Lahore 2016
    • Labview Workshop 2016
    • Open House
    • Khwarizmi Science Society
    • Helping Pakistan’s Universities
      • National University of Technology (NUTECH) 2019
      • Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences
        (PIEAS) 2019 (Final Phase)
      • Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences
        (PIEAS) 2019 (Phase 2)
      • Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences
        (PIEAS) 2018 (Phase 1)
      • National University of Science & Technology 2016
      • Habib University 2014
      • Preston University 2013
      • Ghulam Ishaque Khan Institute of
        Engineering Sciences and Technology 2011
      • Institute of Space Technology 2010
    • The National STEM School
      • STEM School (2018 – 2019)
      • STEM school (2016 – 2017)
    • Abdus Salam Memorial Lecture Series
  • Facilities
    • Laboratories
    • Equipments
    • Devices & Softwares
      • PhysPlot
      • Physlogger
      • Phystrack
    • Mechanical Workshop
    • Inventory
    • 3D Printed Galleria
    • Forms
    • Equipment Howto’s
  • Media
    • Visitors
    • Testimonials
  • Contact Us