Posts in category Education
First lecture Quantum Transport
has happened today. I was pleased with the number of students: it is significantly higher than year ago. Yet in comparison with the former generation the students looked kind of shy being not eager to respond on my questions and provocations. Perhaps early morning is to blame. Nevertheless, I reacted by going slower. We did not even touch counting statistics: left for the future).
Problem-solving session Advanced Quantum Mechanics
took place on Thursday. Since it was not my show – it is that of Michael Wimmer and Albert Gonzalez – I attended only the first part. I was extremely pleased with the student presentation. Basically, it was about the topic that I have to skip during the lecture and felt guilty about since the topic is nice and rather important for the whole course. The presentation was next to ideal: the topic has been presented clearly, the audience was attending, the message got through.
There were many students at the session. Actually, we have run out of the presentation topics: more students want to present, we need to arrange some extra sessions for this in the second half of the semester.
First Lecture Advanced Quantum Mechanics
has been made today after a long break – 5 year break. I was delighted to get back to my favorite course, equipped with a text-book “Advanced Quantum Mechanics: A practical guide” by Jeroen Danon and me, the book that came out for the cost of so much time and energy.
The classroom was full: up to the last seat(!), it was pretty inspiring. The audience has reacted well on the questions and jokes: at least a part of it. The topic was a bit dry: we have refreshed ordinary quantum mechanics. To the end of the lecture there was a time problem, the end went too fast. Ok, I warned that the first three lectures are dry.
We’ll see what happens next.
Happy New Year
to you, dear reader. Let peace and harmony prevail every aspect of your life!
Today seems a good day to restart my business blog. Since I’m alive, it must go on too. Let me outline my main challenges for 2015 and wish you to confront your challenges as well.
In education, I restart the course on Advanced Quantum Mechanics after five-something year break. That used to be a success, yet the students have changed ever since – so I feel a thrill. The course will be based on my book with Jeroen Danon. Albert Gonzales and Michael Wimmer will help me this year with exercises, so I hope we’ll do it fine.
In research, I need to complete to the papers the ideas of 2014 that came to me and my co-authors – some of them are quite striking and eye-opening. I will apply for a relatively big grant of European Research Council which hopefully gives me some means to work on novel topological effects in multi-terminal Josephson junctions.
As to organization, my role would be modest – conform to my age, I will try to resist most if not all (bureaucratic)changes in the group and the department 🙂 The idea is that the changes that you cannot resist are really useful and necessary 😉 while the others …
In addition, have to confront a way more personal challenge: to cope with a long-standing emotional disbalance that, among other things, seriously affects my business efficiency. 2014 has brought the idea of solving this problem, and hopefully the solution can be implemented in 2015.
Actually, my promotion is pending now: I don’t know if or when it happens. In case it will, I’d get a very useful emotional boost.
Fifth Lecture Quantum Transport 2013
We have started and finished spin transport and departed to quite a different world of Coulomb blockade. I think we had a good discussion of Coulomb blockade in the beginning, yet there is much more to say on next week.
Fifth Lecture Advanced Statistical Mechanics 2013
We finally get to the real stuff: we have discussed non-ideal gases, talked a lot about perturbation theory, in general and in the context of the non-ideal gas. I did not have time to talk about critical point, yet this comes twice in the course of problem-solving sessions.
First Problem-Solving Session Quantum Transport 2013
Today I have delivered homework explanations for Quantum Transport course. I haven’t done this for ages, so was not sure about my performance. Yet it appeared to be fun, at least for me, we have dealt with many things including the tricks of Taylor expansion 🙂 And we managed to complete all the problems on time.
Third Lecture Quantum Transport 2013
Today we have finished the interference, and made a half of the third lecture finishing by Laplace equation. There is thus a stable delay by a half of the lecture. The audience has stabilized, remains bigger than a year ago. They look serious.
Third Lecture Advanced Statistical Mechanics 2013
was today, on the last day of February. We have started with Lagrangian multipliers, of all things, since this piece of analysis did not sound to more than a half of the students. Then we finish the probabilities, and get to the formulation of statistical mechanics. As a matter of fact, we have just started lecture #3 with an example of a two-level system. The lecture appeared more abstract and dry than intended, I have to work on this.
Fairy Tales 2013
our showcase course of theoretical physics has started with a bigger number of students. They looked sufficiently fascinated. There was a problem with lecture tempo and detail level. Anybody read this? Can I have some feedback please?