Preface
These notes represent an experiment in the use of information technology in teaching an advanced
undergraduate physics course, Quantum Physics at UCSD. The experiment has several goals.
- To make all the class material including a complete set of lecture notes available to students
on the World-Wide Web. - To make use of some simple multimedia technology to enhance the classnotes as a learning
tool compared to a conventional textbook. - To present a complex subject to students in several different ways so that each student can
use the learning techniques best suited to that individual. - To get some experience with the use of multimedia technologies in teaching advanced courses.
- To produce course material that might be appropriate for distance learning or self-paced courses
in the future.
The current set of notes covers a 3 quarter course at UCSD, from the beginning of Quantum Me-
chanics to the quantization of the electromagnetic field and the Dirac equation. The notes for the
last quarter should be considered to be a first draft.
At this time, the experiment is in progress. One quarter is not sufficient to optimize the course
material. While a complete set of html based notes has been produced, only limited additional
audio and visual material is now available.
It is my personal teaching experience that upper division physics students learn in different ways.
Many physics students get very little more than an introduction to the material out of the lecture
and prefer to learn from the textbook and homework. Some students claim they cannot learn from
the textbook and rely on lectures to get their basic understanding. Some prefer a rather verbose
exposition of the material in the text, while others prefer a concisediscussion largely based on
equations. Modern media have conditioned the students of today ina way that is often detrimental
to learning complex subjects from either a lecture or a textbook.
I chose to use html and the worldwide web as the primary delivery tool for enhanced class notes.
All of the standard software tools and information formats are usable from html. Every computer
can access this format using Internet browsers.
An important aspect of the design of the notes is to maintain a concise basic treatment of the physics,
with derivations and examples available behind hyperlinks. It is my goal,not fully met at this time,
to have very detailed derivations, with less steps skipped than in standard textbooks. Eventually,
this format will allow more examples than are practical in a textbook.
Another important aspect is audio discussion of important equations and drawings. The browser
is able to concentrate on an equation while hearing about the details instead of having to go back
an forth between text and equation. The use of this needs to be expanded and would benefit from
better software tools.
Because of the heavy use of complex equations in this course, the html is generated from LaTeX
input. This has not proved to be a limitation so far since native html can be included. LaTeX