Posted in September 2009

Took place today. It has been scheduled directly after the lecture of Herre van der Zant on "physics at NanoScale" , in the same room. Handy! The students can follow seemingly similar courses in the same place and time. Indeed, almost a half of the students just remained seated. Given circumstances, I start the lecture with explaining the difference between the courses. I did it at rational level of course without going into historical details about mesoscopics and Kees Harmans. I have a feeling that the students appreciated the explanations. Actually, I’d love students attending both courses: it does not happen that often in the course of the whole education that they are given two different, complementary views at a set of topics.

Number of students again roughly corresponded to Blackboard data. I could not beat temptation and actually counted them after the break (to reduce statistical error). That came to 18: 85% of Blackboard number. Let us hope I can keep them all.

The audience had, on my estimation, 50% overlap with that of Advanced Quantum course. I should eventually check this: it can become important. Again, in comparison with the last year the audience was decisively more active. Imagine, I get a question from a "native" student during the FIRST lecture! This is the second case in the course of my service at TU. Another impression – let me formulate it like this – the audience is more mature. And more open for less common things. Close to the end, we have to vote. I had too little time to talk about counting in detail and ask them to choose if we shift the topic to the second question. They vote fast and without hesitation. So I had to gabble the last fifteen minutes:)

Again I was a bit edgy about new audience and put too much jokes and side stories. It was supefluous to mention Tolstoy: he deserved better occasion. There was too much about winding coils in the beginning: guess they got it from the first run. All these side stories costed time: therefore this gabbling about counting. Volgende keer better.

A worrisome point. Felt less contact with audience while presenting elementary wave mechanics. Plane wave, statistics went fine. The stress become to mount at waveguides. One-dimensional motion with a barrier: most faces got surprised. Did they get it during the bachelor course? In case it has been skipped from the bachelor, I really must protest. There must be limits to profanation of quantum line in Delft. Anyway, if this piece of knowledge is absent, it is all on me. Is it a good idea to include it in home work? In Advanced Quantum, we do not hesitate to refresh the elementary quantum with home work. Then it could be an extra set of problems, perhaps 2. I ask the readers of the blog to react to this proposal.

And final point about being edgy and interactivity. I have not erased the (physical) blackboard. Somebody did it for me. There was the URL of this blog at the blackboard. If this person reads me: many thanks and an apology.

Has happened today. There were almost as many students as Blackboard has predicted. Actually did not count them. Introduced Alina and she received an enthousiastic response (despite a realtively short appearence).

The audience is visibly more active than a year ago. Any time I was asking for a response, I was getting some. A hypothesis: this is a function of student density. When students are close to each other, they are less likely to fall asleep and thus follow the lecture. As to questions: we did not get that far. The questions usually come from international students, and it seemed that there are no many of them this year.

I’m afraid I was also slightly over-excited and put too much entertainment. The response to this was mixed. Perhaps because of jokes, was out of time for the Fock space. Anyway this topic suits more the lecture #2.

There were many organizational questions after the lecture: eventually, much more than in years past. There may be a sort of of misunderstanding. I am going to post a message at the Blackboard to make sure everybody knows the answers.

To summarize, I met a reasonably active, inspiring audience. However, I still have to adjust to it.