PHYS 427 :: Physics Illinois :: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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Announcements
1/17: The first discussion will be on Tues Jan. 28. There are no discussions on Jan 21.
1/27: Clarification on lecture participation grading: the two lowest participation grades will be dropped in computing the final 'lecture participation' component of the course grade.
1/31: Next week Prof. Shelton will hold office hours on Monday, Feb 3, from 10:30-12.
2/20: Midterm 1 is next week, 2/27. The exam will take place in class and will cover material from lectures 1-7. Here is the formula sheet that will be made available with the exam. You will not be allowed to consult other study material during the exam. A math worksheet is also available for people who want more practice with mathematical tecnhiques that often come up in this course.
2/25: To help with midterm studying, solutions for problem set 4 will be posted today. Because of this, no more late homeworks will be accepted this week.
3/2: Scores for midterm 1 are up in the grade book. The average score for the exam was 49/80, or 61%, with high score 76 and low score 23. This exam will be curved to a nominal 80% average.
Given the heightened concerns about Covid-19, we will be handling excused absences more officially than usual. If you feel sick, go to McKinley instead of class. Send the visit confirmation to Prof. Shelton and/or Brendan Rhyno for an excused absence.
3/11: J. Shelton's office hours will be truncated this week: 2-2:30 pm. To support social distancing measures, we will no longer keep track of lecture participation grades.
3/12: In preparation for the online migration, the course has a new Piazza website.
3/26: There will be no late penalty for HW6; it will be accepted up to one week late (Apr. 3) with no deduction of points.
3/30: The final has been scheduled for May 12. The final exam will be made available on this date and will be due back a few days later, details to be announced closer to the end of term.
Please check your email for the passwords to access the Zoom lectures. There are separate passwords for the Tuesday and Thursday lectures.
3/31: The lecture notes by David Tong are an excellent and freely available resource, available at this link.
4/2: Apologies, today's lecture recording missed the first 10 minutes or so of class. Here is formula sheet that would have been included in an in-class version of midterm 2; see the schedule for practise problems.
4/28: Usually the last lecture in the course sketches some advanced topics that will not be covered on the final exam. Under the circumstances, I do not view that as a productive use of everyone's time this year. Therefore the last lecture (May 5) will be replaced by live Q&A time with Prof. Shelton. This Q&A time will not be recorded.
4/29: The final exam will be available for download at midnight (US central time) May 12, and must be returned within 24 hours of access, and no later than 23:59 on May 13.
4/30: On the off chance that you want to fill your copious free time with reading about kinetic theory, I recommend the lecture notes by David Tong here.