Second lecture advanced quantum mechanics

The events of yesterday, in particular the party, have significantly impeded my teaching abilities as well as willingness to teach. But there are things men must do, so I stood up and was on time in the class.

I started with an honest promise that it will be the most boring lecture in the course. They laughed in disbelief, but I guess I managed to convince them pretty soon. Indeed, the lecture is very technical, and the need of all these technicalities is very difficult to assess without applying those many times. I could only state: bear with me, this is important, makes sense, just wait a week or two. This is how we get through the CAPs, field operators and confusion of the second quantization. It is a meaning of this lecture after all to create a feeling of certain confusion, unsatisfied understanding: what are all these funny things for? It will get easier in a week when we will do the same for fermions and at least repeat the stuff.

The contact and feedback is still good. There were questions, although most of them come from three male students in the class. If I only hear correctly, one always calls me "sir". This does not quite fit my democratic convictions, but I don’t dare to correct him, I like him questioning. After all I have an officer rank, though that of army forces of a non-existing state. A question from another student was a real hit: he managed to follow dimensionality of the resulting expressions, revealed a problem and made everybody attent of that (different dimensions of a quantity and its Fourier transform). The audience also responded well to my questions. When I asked if more explanations are rwequired, the answer was quick and positive.

I did therefore more side explanations than last years. By some good magics, I manage make all in time (though I had to go through Fock space that remained from the first lecture). Bad side of it is using side panels of physical blackboard. Bad writting, oftenly not visible to all students, sometimes confusing notations. Last year I wanted to solve this problem by advanced techiques: I made use of a digital tablet where my writtings were directly projected onto the screen. I do not do this this year because of the problems I had. First hardware: I had to bring the tablet along with the laptop and connect six cables, in most cases yet to reboot computer and adjust the resolution to get it working with the tablet. Second, sofware: from time to time, it gave a buffer overflow and there was always a chance that the writting dissapears before it is finished. Third, me: computer pen is slower than chalk and requires better control, one who forgets about writes as a pre-pre-school kid. I don’t know what to do: perhaps I have to find just better software and hardware (better me does not seem a feasible option).

For those who could be offended/confused by explanation about creation/annihilation operators: I’m a Christian, I do believe that (cross) death is a new beginning, no joke is meant.

To summarize, I’m reasonably satisfied with the lecture. How about you, the reader? Still nobody comments …

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