What should students post on this blog?

Each student should make several posts on the blog each week and write comments on several other student posts, in order to gain formative assessment points.
If you want to get a feel for what such posts and comments might look like have a look at the course blog for a previous course I ran.

This does not have to be profound. e.g. A simple summary of one key idea, equation, or experimental data graph is fine.

Printing problem solved

I think I have solved the problem some people were having with printing attachments, e.g. the assignment.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Let me know if it is still not working.

Change of class times

It was agreed today that the following will be the class times

Monday 2-3pm
Tuesday 11am-noon
Wednesday noon-1pm, 2-3pm

Thank you to everyone for their flexibility.

All meetings will be in the same room, the interaction room.

Most weeks, the wednesday 2-3pm time will be a tutorial.

Assignment 1

You can view it here.
Exercises from Solid state simulations are here.
It is due two weeks from today.

Welcome to the course

A few important details.

This course blog will be the main means of communication between staff and students outside class meetings.

All the course meetings will be in the Interaction room (424) in the Physics Annex (building 6).

There have been requests to shift the 11am monday and wednesday meetings, due to conflict with another course. We will discuss this at the first meeting.

You should start reading the text, Solid State Physics by Aschroft and Mermin. There are multiple copies in the library. You might consider buying it or the book by Marder.

You should also download the computer program Solid State Simulations and familiarise yourself with it since there will be many class exercises that use it.

Read the course profile carefully.

An outline of the key ideas for the first two weeks are here.