PH253: Final Exam

Note that our final exam is Friday, 10 December from 8-10:30am. If you have already booked travel home before Friday, 10 December ... well, we have a problem, and we should talk.

Basic rules:

• 12 problems, you choose 6 to solve.
• If you do more than 6, I'll grade the best 6.
• Comprehensive - basically everything through last week will be on the exam (i.e., nothing on this week's lectures).
• Formula sheets will be given - they will be an agglomeration of the formula sheets from the first two exams, plus whatever is necessary from the material after exam 2.
• You can bring 2 of your own sheets of 8.5x11 paper, double sided (or 4 sheets single sided).

Topics, roughly

• Relativity
• Radiation (accelerated charges, blackbody)
• Photoelectric/Compton/photons
• Wave-particle; de Broglie
• Schrodinger's equation, 1D potentials
• Bohr atom
• Hydrogen in 3D
• Angular momentum & spin
• molecules & bonding
• Multi-electron atoms & the periodic table
• periodic solids, energy bands, metals-insulators-semiconductors
• particle statistics

Definitely not on the final, but covered in class:

• LASERs
• variational method
• p-n junctions (diodes), transistors
• whatever we do for the last lecture

Gaming the system:

• I listed12 topics. There are 12 problems. You have to solve 6 of them. Logically, you are responsible for only half the material. Pick your half carefully - if there are 1 or 2 topics you are sure you will not 'get' in time, skip them.
• I will reuse old HW and exam questions, from this semester and last semester. Most questions will be new, but there will be a few recycled ones.
• Letting you bring your own sheets is often a trap. If I let you bring all that in, how much could it really help you? You might get lucky printing out old exam/HW questions, but the odds are not great.
• Work old HW/exam problems. The exam is about solving problems, so you should do that to prepare. I'm also likely to ask the same sorts of problems I have before, if not the same thing exactly.
• Ask questions during the exam! I will often give out a startling amount of information if you're brave enough to ask during the exam.
• Sleep. You will need your wits about you - the final will be more about cleverness than regurgitation, so cramming the night before will will probably hurt more than it helps. That being said, arrive properly caffeinated. I will. I will probably also bring a thoroughly unhealthy breakfast snack for you.