Posts in category Education

Was devoted to a standard topic: statistics of ideal quantum gases. The Bose-condensation was a bit overloaded with details and did not go well. Must revise it next year. Otherwise, the lecture was affordable.

did not go too bad. Guess I could explain use and complexity of perturbation theory in the context. There were also many students.

(At least) two things could go better. 1. I did not exlpain the realtion between cumulants and connected/disconnected diagramms. Fortunately, I got a question, and though I did not manage to gasp it fast, it was exteremly helpful. 2. I should have spent more time on critical point explaining the significance and uniqness of Taylor expansion.

should have been the third in fact. I still keep the delay for a bit more a half of the lecture. I could have enjoyed a bigger audience today… Anyway, I should not complain since the intereaction with the audience was quite good despite my somehow hasty style.

has taken place today. Finally we are through the basis of statistical mechanics (with one lecture delay) and can do more challenging things. The attention of the audience is fading, that can be after-the-break effect. I have to wait for a minute before I get the answer on a rather simple question about dimensions. Still we can keep some interaction…

has hardly started yet, I have shown only 3-4 transparencies of this. The audience this year is very much listening, and posing interesting questions. I still have to learn how to respond to this without ruining the time schedule.

To give an example: we have been talking about the Aharonov-Bohm effect, quantum interference of an electron about a magnetic coil. That provoked a question: “Is the interference affected by the measurement of magnetic field in the coil?”. This is a splendid question that reflects most of physics like a water droplet reflects most of the Universe. I enjoyed answering, yet 20 minutes have gone…

This was more or less ok. The topic was important, this was the core of the course. We have discussed how to build up statististical mechanics, and this really resembled discussion. So we moved forward rather slowly. I have shown only the first two transparencies of the third lecture.

I was exhausted close to the end and began to mix up plus and minus signs. Need to take vitamines…

It is so that I still enjoy the audience which is unusually interactive and motivates me to explain more, perhaps even going lower than their level. It also creates time problem. So far we’ve done 1.5 lectures. No way I can catch up next time since the third lecture is overloaded with the material. Not sure what to do, perhaps I need an extra lecture this year.

However, I think it is the first time I could explain the details of Levitov formula. An achievement…

To start with, I was pleasantly surprized with a number of students attending. It was the same as at the first lecture. I think I did not manage to explain last time how difficult the course is.

We went through the rest of thermodynamics rather quickly: even I had to make a break five minutes ahead of time. I got a resonable feedback. I was caught with minus sign and my unability to make a distinction between the work extracted from the system and put into the system. Otherwise, the presentation of thermodynamic potentials was better than a year ago.

Second half was the intro into probability. I guess my introductory story was too much aside the subject and was difficult to follow. I must devise something better. It was also long, so I had a time problem in the end and could not talk about Lagrange multipliers. Pity, I will have to do them next time without much preparation.

has also happened today. In addition to this, there was a long real-time bureaucratic meeting and an organizational skype meeting, that made my day complete.

The interaction with the audience was somehow similar to that during the first lecture of quantum transport, and, being rather unprepared for, I’ve found a physical overlap between the audiences. It did not happen last year, if I recall correctly. So I went slow, did not say anything about inverse scattering matrix technology (could do this for sine-Gordon), yet we’ve explicitly done all simple variations of the Lagrangian: was nice.

It’s inspiring that there is still a group of students sufficiently charmed by theoretical physics.

has taken place today. I felt something strange about the audience: it stirred me to go slower, talk calmer, and give more details than usual. We did not progress much with the stuff of the first lecture: basically, we had to stop at Landauer formula. However, I feel reasonably satistfied with the contact. I hope they liked it as well.