• Prof. Pochung Chen
• R521, Physics building
• pcchen {at} phys {dot} nthu {dot} edu {dot} tw

• TBA

• T3T4R3R4

• CHEM II化二 223

• TBA

• Physics for Scientists and Engineers (Serway and Jewett)

• This course follows a 16-week syllabus with extra learning materials available online.
• AI tools (like ChatGPT) are allowed with necessary explanations.

Week 1 Course introduction What is time?

Week 2 Lorentz transformation How to describe a dynamical system?

Week 3 Newton's second law 教師節

Week 4 Do forces always appear in pairs? Center of mass

Week 5 國慶日 Is energy always conserved?

Week 6 Conservative force and potential energy How does a rotating top maintain its balance?

Week 7 Moment of inertia Coriolis effect

Week 8 midterm (Q1-Q5) midterm 2 discussions

Week 9 Are black holes black? Gravity and spacetime curvature

Week 10 Is pressure in liquids a scalar, a vector or a tensor? Hagen-Poiseuille equation

Week 11 What is propagating in traveling waves? Wave equation

Week 12 Wave equation 2 Sound waves

Week 13 How is thermal equilibrium reached? Heat and the first law of thermodynamics

Week 14 Heat and the first law of thermodynamics 2 How to quantify uncertainty in a statistical system?

Week 15 Entropy and the second law of thermodynamics thermal and information entropy

Week 16 final (Q6-Q10) final discussions

• Week 1: 9/17/2020
  • The van der Waals system.
  • Fluids, Magnets, and the Ising Model.
  • Arovas, Chapter 7.2, 7.3.
• Week 2: 9/24/2020
  • Mean Field Theory.
  • Arovas, Chapter 7.4.
• Week 3: 10/1/2020 中秋節
  • No class.
• Week 4: 10/8/2020
  • Variational Density Matrix Method.
  • Arovas, Chapter 7.5.
• Week 5: 10/15/2020
  • Variational Density Matrix Method.
  • Arovas, Chapter 7.6.
• Week 6: 10/22/2020
  • Variational Density Matrix Method.
  • Landau Theory of Phase Transition.
  • Arovas, Chapter 7.5, 7.6.
• Week 7: 10/29/2020
  • Landau Theory of Phase Transition.
  • Ising model.
  • Arovas, Chapter 7.6, 6.2.
• Week 8: 11/5/2020
  • Ising model.
  • Transfer matrix, Peierls’ argument.
  • Arovas, Chapter 6.2.
  • Pathria, Chapter 13.2.
  • Baxter, Chapter 2.
• Week 9: 11/12/2020
  • 2D Ising model.
  • High temperature expansion, low temperature expansion.
  • Duality transformation.
  • Pathria, Chapter 13.4.
  • Baxter, Chapter 6.
• Week 10: 11/19/2020
  • Renormalization group.
• Week 11: 11/26/2020
  • Renormalization group.
• Week 12: 12/3/2020
  • Scaling.
  • Renormalization group.
• Week 13: 12/10/2020
  • Renormalization group.
• Week 14: 12/17/2020
  • Renormalization group.
  • Finite size scaling.
• Week 15: 12/24/2020
  • Renormalization group.
  • Finite size scaling.
• Week 16: 12/31/2020
  • Finite size scaling.
  • Tensor renormalization group.
• Week 17: 1/7/2021
• Week 18: 1/14/2021