B.Sc. in Physics

Interactive Physlets

Course Descriptions:
         Physics 1020
         Physics 1021
         Physics 1050
         Physics 1051
         Physics 2053
         Physics 2056
         Physics 2400
         Physics 2151
         Physics 2553
         Physics 2820
         Physics 3060
         Physics 3160
         Physics 3180
         Physics 3220
         Physics 3820
         ES 2150         

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Course Descriptions

(Click on the underlined course numbers to see the most recent web page.)
For more information on the B.Sc. in Physics at Grenfell Campus, contact the Chair of Physics.
Also consult the tentative course rotation schedule for Physics courses required for the major and minor degree.

Physics 1020 Introductory Physics I

This course will  be offered in Fall Term annually.

A non-calculus based introduction to mechanics.

Prerequisite: Mathematics 1000 or 1090, which may be taken concurrently.

Lectures: Three hours per week.

Laboratory / Tutorial: Three hours per week.

Instructors: TBA

Physics 1021  Introductory Physics II

This course will  be offered in Winter Term annually.

A non-calculus based introduction to fluids, wave motion, light, optics, electricity and magnetism.

Prerequisite: Physics 1020 or 1050. Mathematics 1000 or 1091, which may be taken concurrently.

Lectures: Three hours per week.

Laboratory / Tutorial: Three hours per week.

Instructor:  Dr. A. Aleksejevs

Physics 1050 General Physics I: Mechanics

This course will be offered in Fall Term annually.

A calculus-based introduction to mechanics. The course will emphasize problem-solving.

Prerequisite: Mathematics 1000, which may be taken concurrently.

Lectures: Three hours per week.

Laboratory: Three hours per week.

Instructor:   Dr. D. Forbes

Physics 1051 General Physics II: Oscillations, Waves, Electromagnetism

This course will be offered in Winter Term annually.

Calculus-based study of simple harmonic motion and waves; electricity, magnetism; geometrical and physical optics.

Prerequisite: Physics 1050 and Mathematics 1001. Math 1001 may be taken concurrently.

Lectures: Three hours per week.

Laboratory: Three hours per week.

Instructor:  Dr. D. Forbes

NOTE: Credit can be obtained for only one of Physics 1021, 1051, and 1061.

Physics 2053 Fluids and Thermal Physics

This course will be offered in Winter Term annually.

Examines elasticity, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, kinetic theory and statistical mechanics.

Prerequisite: Mathematics 1001, and Physics 1051 (or 1054).

Lectures: Three hours per week.

Laboratory: Three hours per week.

Instructor:  Dr. D. Forbes

Physics 2056 General Physics VI: Modern Physics

This course will be offered in Winter Term annually.

Special relativity, quanta of light, atomic structure and spectral lines, quantum structure of atoms and molecules, nuclei and elementary particles.

Prerequisite: Mathematics 1001, Physics 1050 (or 1020 and 1021), and Physics 1051 (or 1054).

Lectures: Three hours per week.

Laboratory: Three hours per week.

Instructor: Dr. A. Aleksejevs 

Earth Science 2150 Moons & Planets

This course will not be offered in 2013/14.

An introduction to the nature of the rocky, icy, and gaseous bodies that orbit stars, both in the solar system and beyond. Topics include gravitation and orbital motion, light and atoms, physical processes that shape planetary interiors, surfaces, and atmospheres, the formation and evolution of planetary systems, and the detection and properties of exoplanets.

Prerequisite: There are no Math or Physics prerequisites.

Lectures: Three hours per week. Occasional observing sessions at the Grenfell Campus Observatory.

Instructor:  Dr. D. Forbes

Physics 2151 Stars & Galaxies

This course will be offered in Fall 2013.

This course is an introduction to the Universe! Topics include light and gravity, the lives and deaths of stars, the stuff between the stars, supernovae and neutron stars, black holes and relativity, galaxies, cosmology, dark matter, dark energy and the Big Bang, and the prospect of life elsewhere.

Prerequisite: Two semester courses in Mathematics at the first year level.

Lectures: Three hours per week. Occasional observing sessions at the Grenfell Campus Observatory.

Instructor:  Dr. D. Forbes

Physics 2400  Subatomic Physics 

This course will be offered in Winter Term 2013.

An introduction to nuclear and particle physics.  Topics include nuclear properties and models; radioactive dating; fission; nuclear reactors; accelerators; the detection, classification, and properties of subatomic particles.  Applications in areas such as ecology, dosimetry, medical physics and nuclear astrophysics are discussed.

Prerequisite: Level III Advanced Mathematics or Mathematics 1090.  It is recommended that students have completed at least one of Level II and Level III high school physics courses.

Lectures: Three hours per week.

Instructor:  Dr. A. Aleksejevs

Physics 2553 Introduction to Analog and Digital Electronics

This course will not be offered in 2012/13.

The basics of analog and digital electronics: direct current circuits, capacitors and inductors, alternating currents, test equipment and measurement, transducers, diodes and transistors, an introduction to operational amplifiers, digital basics, digital circuitry, and digital and analog I/O.

Lectures: This course will be taught in combined lab/lecture format with two 3-hour sessions per week.

Prerequisites: Physics 1021 or 1051 and Mathematics 1000 or equivalent.

Instructor:  TBA
 

Physics 2820 Computational Mechanics

This course will be offered in Fall Term annually.

This course covers newtonian dynamics and celestial mechanics, numerical differentiation and integration, numerical solutions to mechanics problems, data and spectral analysis, Fourier series and normal modes, oscillations and vibrations, linear and non-linear oscillators, nonlinear dynamics and chaos.

Prerequisite: Physics 1051 (or 1054), and Mathematics 2000 which may be taken concurrently.

Lectures and laboratories: Six hours per week.

Instructor:  TBA

Physics 3060  Electricity and Magnetism

This course will be offered in Fall Term 2013.

Coulomb's law; electrostatic field and potential; Gauss' law; conductors; magnetostatics; Ampere's law; Biot - Savart law; dielectric and magnetic materials, electrostatic and magnetostatic energy; Lorentz force; time varying fields; Faraday's law; Maxwell's equations.

Prerequisite: Physics 1051 and Mathematics 3260. Math 3260 may be taken concurrently.

Credit restrictions: Physics 3500.

Lectures: Three hours per week.

Laboratory: Three hours per week.

Instructor:  TBA

Physics 3061  Electromagnetic Theory

This course will be offered in Winter Term 2014.

Maxwell's equations, energy and momentum in electromagnetic systems, EM waves, potentials and fields, dynamical systems of charges, radiation, the interaction of EM fields with matter, and the relativistic formulation of electromagnetism and its applications.

Prerequisite: Physics 3060.

Lectures: Three hours per week.

Instructor:  TBA

Physics 3160  Stellar and Galactic Astronomy

This course will be offered in Winter Term 2014.

This course covers the structure and history of our own Galaxy, the properties of normal and active galaxies, their formation and evolution.  The second part of the course is an overview of cosmological models and their observational background, the Big Bang, and the evolution and expansion of the Universe.

Prerequisite: Physics 2056 and 2151 and Mathematics 2000. Physics 3220 is recommended.

Credit restrictions: Physics 3150, 3151.

Lectures: Three hours per week.

Instructor:  Dr. D. Forbes
 

Physics 3180 Observational Astrophysics

This course will be offered in Fall Term 2013.

Theoretical topics including celestial mechanics, continuous and line spectra, stellar structure and nucleosynthesis, and stellar evolution.  Observational topics include planning observations, acquisition of images with a CCD electronic camera, fundamentals of astronomical image processing, photometry, and stellar spectroscopy using a variety of software packages.

Prerequisite: Physics 2056 and Mathematics 2000. Physics 2151 is recommended.

Credit restrictions: Physics 3150, 3151.

Lectures: Three hours per week.

Instructor:  Dr. D. Forbes

Physics 3220  Classical Mechanics I

This course will be offered in Fall Term 2013.

Kinematics and dynamics of a particle. Moving reference systems. Celestial mechanics. Systems of particles.

Prerequisite: Applied Mathematics 3260 and Physics 1051 (or 1054). AM 3260 may be taken concurrently.

Lectures: Three hours per week.

Instructor:  TBA
 

Physics 3230  Classical Mechanics II

This course will not be offered in 2013/14.

Covers rigid body motion. Lagrange's equations. Hamilton's equations. Vibrations. Special theory of relativity.

Prerequisite: Physics 3220, Mathematics 3202 and 3260.

Lectures: Three hours per week.

Instructor:  TBA

Physics 3250  Elementary Particles and Fields

This course will not be offered in 2013/14.

Includes the Standard Model, classification of elementary particles and forces of nature, symmetries, conservation laws, quark model, quantum electrodynamics, quantum chromodynamics, and the theory of weak interactions.

Prerequisite: Physics 2056, 2400, Mathematics 3202 and 3260.

Lectures: Three hours per week.

Instructor:  Dr. A. Aleksejevs

Physics 3400  Thermodynamics

This course will be offered in Winter Term 2014.

Covers the first and second laws of thermodynamics. Entropy. Thermodynamics of real substances. Kinetic theory of matter. Introduction to statistical mechanics.

Prerequisite: Physics 2053, 2056, Mathematics 2000.

Lectures: Three hours per week.

Instructor:  TBA

Physics 3650  Quantum Mechanics I

This course will not be offered in 2013/14.

Includes a review of elementary quantum physics and covers such topics as wave functions, operators, expectation values, the Schodinger equation in 1-dimension, states and operators in Hilbert space, coordinate and momentum representations, quantum mechanics in three dimensions, angular momentum, spherically symmetric potentials, and approximation methods.

Prerequisite: Physics 2056, 3220 and Mathematics 3202.

Lectures: Three hours per week.

Instructor:  Dr. A. Aleksejevs

Physics 3820  Mathematical Physics III

This course will not be offered in 2013/14.

Examines the functions of a a complex variable; residue calculus.  Introduction to Cartesian tensor analysis.  Matrix eigenvalues and eigenvectors.  Diagonalization of tensors.  Matrix formulation of quantum mechanics.  Quantum mechanical spin.  Vector differential operators in curvilinear coordinate systems.  Partial differential equations of Mathematical Physics and boundary value problems; derivation of the classical equations, separation of variables; Helmholtz equation in spherical polar coordinates.

Prerequisite: Applied Mathematics/Pure Mathematics 3260, and Physics 3810 (or Applied Mathematics/Pure Mathematics 3202).

Lectures: Three hours per week.

Instructor: TBA
 

EnvS 3470 Transport Phenomena

This course will not be offered in 2013/14.

Fundamentals of fluid flow. Conservation laws for mass, momentum, and energy. Dimensional analysis. Turbulence. Confined fluid flows. Fundamentals of heat transfer. Conduction, convention, and radiation. Diffusion, dispersion, and osmosis. Applications to transport of pollutants at the microscopic and macroscopic scale.

Prerequisites: Mathematics 1001. Physics 1020 and 1021 or 1050 and 1051.

Lectures: Three hours per week.

Instructor: Dr. P. Rouleau

EnvS 4479 Groundwater Flow

This course will not be offered in 2013/14.

Groundwater in the hydrologic cycle. Principles of fluid flow through permeable media. Hydraulic properties of soil and rock formations. Groundwater at the local and regional scale. The unit basin model. Groundwater as a transport agent of chemicals and microbes. Groundwater resources, reservoir characterisation, and quality assessment. Groundwater contamination.

Prerequisite: Environmental Science 3470 or the permission of the instructor and Program Chair.

Lectures: Three hours per week.

Instructor: Dr. P. Rouleau

Physics 4100 Senior Physics Seminar

This course will not be offered in 2013/14.

A review of current topics in Physics addressed in a seminar format.  Seminars are presented by faculty, students, and guest speakers.  Topics are normally drawn from the fields of sub-atomic & nuclear physics or astronomy & cosmology.  This is a designated Writing course.

Prerequisite: Normally restricted to students in the Physics program who have completed 78 credit hours or more.

Physics 4880 Physics Laboratory

This course will not be offered in 2013/14.

This course will introduce the student to advanced laboratory work in several areas of physics.

Prerequisite: This course is restricted to students in the Physics program who have completed 60 credit hours or more.

Physics 4950 Research Experience in Physics

This course will not be offered in 2013/14.

An opportunity for students to participate in original research under the supervision of a faculty advisor.  Students are required to present a written report and to give a seminar on their work.

Prerequisite: Permission of the Physics Program Chair.  This course is restricted to students in the Physics program who have completed 78 credit hours or more.

Last update: 25 March, 2013

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