Instructor:
David Stuart, DavidStuart@UCSB.edu, Broida 3001.
Office Hours: TBD
Course summary: This freshman seminar will discuss the physics experiments that revealed the fundamental building blocks of the universe over the course of the last century. We'll look at the questions that drove the experiments, the techniques that they used, and the impact that they had. We'll also discuss ways that undergraduate science majors can make their own contributions to modern experiments through undergraduate research projects.
Grading: Grading is P/NP. Students will be evaluated based on their participation in class and completion of 4 homework assignments assigned throughout the course.
Schedule: The schedule of topics is below.
| Date | Topic |
|---|---|
| Friday Jan. 10 | Introduction |
| Friday Jan. 17 | Discovery of the electron |
| Friday Jan. 24 | Discovery of the neutron |
| Friday Jan. 31 | Discovery of the positron |
| Friday Feb. 7 | Fission |
| Friday Feb. 14 | Fusion and discovery of the neutrino |
| Friday Feb. 21 | Discovery of cosmic rays |
| Friday Feb. 28 | Discovery of the pion |
| Friday Mar. 7 | A particle zoo and the quark model |
| Friday Mar. 14 | The Higgs boson and the LHC |