Past and Current Class Documents (Steuard Jensen)

This will serve as a place to put handouts and notes for classes I am teaching, and a place to store particularly useful documents from classes I have taught.

Alma Classes

General Physics I: An introductory survey of physics with emphasis on problem-solving. Uses algebra but not calculus. Appropriate for students who plan no further study in physics. Includes mechanics, vibrations and waves, sound, electricity and magnetism, optics, and atomic and nuclear physics.
Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics: Study of thermodynamics as seen and derived from a quantum statistics perspective. Includes first, second and third laws of thermodynamics; kinetic theory of gasses; Maxwell-Boltzman statistics; thermal equilibrium; and fluctuations and irreversibility.

General stuff

Space-time diagrams: Visualizing Special Relativity (632 KB PDF; 4 pages): A handout written for my introductory physics class explaining a method of visualizing special relativity. It's pretty terse (especially for me), but I think it covers the essential ideas of different observers' perception of time. (It even includes a pictorial explanation of the twin "paradox" on the last page.)
GRE Optics review (70 KB PDF; 4 pages): Notes on optics written for a physics GRE review course. We quickly decided that handing the students notes this detailed might lull them into thinking that we were going to do all the studying for them (and falsely so! Even this review doesn't cover everything GRE takers need to know, especially when it comes to general "waves" rather than pure optics.) But since I did already write up this one topic, I might as well post the notes here.

Claremont Classes

Physics 30 (fall 2008): General Physics aimed primarily at life science majors and pre-med students. This semester covers classical mechanics (including oscillations and waves) and a bit of relativity.
Physics 31 (spring 2009): General Physics aimed primarily at life science majors and pre-med students. This semester covers electricity and magnetism, optics, and basic concepts of thermodynamics and quantum physics.
Physics 71 (spring 2009): Introductory Mechanics at Pomona College is a half-course on basic classical mechanics for students who have taken Physics 70. It involves problem solving using conservation laws and Newton's laws in a variety of examples.
Physics 102 (spring 2009): Intermediate Electricity and Magnetism introduces a variety of sophisticated methods for solving problems in electromagnetism and at least touches on a wide range of advanced topics in the field.
Physics 114 (fall 2008): Quantum Mechanics, taught from the perspective of states and operators. Based on Townsend's textbook A Modern Approach to Quantum Mechanics.
Physics 115 (spring 2008): Statistical mechanics, which bridges the gap between the simple physics of individual atoms and realistic systems of (very) many particles. Based on Schroeder's textbook Thermal Physics.