PHY483F

Relativity Theory I (2020-21) -- PHY483F/1483F

Brief overview

This course will introduce General Relativity from a physics point of view, emphasizing a modern perspective. I will begin with a review and a rephrasing of Special Relativity, including the case of constant relativistic acceleration. Then I will motivate curved spacetime, the affine connection, and the covariant derivative. I will derive the equation for a geodesic, the analogue of a straight line in curved spacetime. From there, I will develop the Riemann curvature tensor, and show how it encodes useful physics like geodesic deviation and tidal forces. Then I will introduce the famous Einstein equations and show how they can be used to describe stars and black holes. I will then showcase several of the experimental successes of GR, finishing up with the recent discovery of gravitational waves. (For more details, please see the syllabus.)

Important Things

Lectures (with the Prof.) will be held online on Mondays and Thursdays from 11:10-12:00. Tutorials (led by the TA) will be held online on Fridays from 13:10-14:00. Weekly office hours (with the Prof.) will be held online on Mondays from 15:10-16:00 and on Tuesdays from 17:10-18:00. Zoom meeting information for lectures and tutorials and office hours is posted on Quercus for privacy reasons.

Syllabus
Calendar of events
Lecture notes [6MB .pdf, will be updated]
Textbooks
Computing
Prerequisites
GR courses: PHY vs MAT
Deadlines and accommodations
Contact the prof

Announcements

These will be posted in reverse chronological order, to make the latest ones easiest to find.

Dec.07: If any undergraduates are interested in doing a reading course on string theory with me in Winter/Spring semester, please let me know.
Nov.30b: I will hold the make-up Monday lecture (our 24th of 24) on Wednesday 9th December at 11:10am. This will be a review lecture with Q&A, covering the material on the final exam (Chapters 13-23 of lecture notes inclusive).
Nov.30: I have extended the deadline for HW4 to 11:00am on Monday 7th December. (The last possible date to turn in your HW4 and have it graded is therefore one week after that, the day our final oral exams start.) I hope this 4-day penalty-free extension for everyone helps alleviate stress as the semester comes to a crescendo.
Nov.23: Please remember to check your Quercus email frequently! Later today I will be sending you the link for booking final oral exam timeslots -- first come, first served.
Nov.20: I forgot to include the Dropbox upload link for HW4 in the question paper. 😳 This is now corrected. Please re-download it.
Nov.19b: Homework 4 is posted.
Nov.19: midterm grades are posted on Quercus. Scores ranged between 70% and 100% with a median of 84.375%.
Nov.05b: I will run office hours next week, as usual on Monday at 3pm. For the Tuesday office hour I will need to push back the start time to 5:30pm, because I am giving a 4pm talk+Q&A just before that which may run past 5pm.
Nov.05: Homework 3 is posted.
Nov.02: when taking your oral midterm exam, please have your UofT ID handy. I need to check that you are who you say you are.
Oct.29: I have updated the midterm guidance page with specific comments about academic integrity. I have also made a few updates to the lecture notes; please re-download a copy.
Oct.27b: following a good suggestion from a student in office hours, I have added a technology tip to the midterm guidance page.
Oct.27: If you want to use some number of Grace Days for HW2, you must tell the TA how many before 11:00 EDT tomorrow -- he is the one keeping track of the marks. (If you tell me instead, I will have to forward the information to him; it is more efficient for you to tell him directly.)
Oct.22: 10% of students have not yet booked their midterm oral exam timeslot. If this is you, please do so ASAP - bookings close on Sunday. Notification emails were sent to you via Quercus.
Oct.19: here is some guidance about the midterm oral exam.
Oct.19: after a good question in office hours, I have slightly updated Q2(c) to remove an ambiguity and reduce complexity. Please reload the HW2 question paper.
Oct.10c: On Friday, the government of Ontario finally announced new pandemic lockdown restrictions which public health experts had recommended much earlier to curb the second wave. As an accommodation for inevitable disruptions, I am extending the due date for HW2 by one week. The new due date will be Oct.29 at 11am. I hope this helps reduce your general stress levels.
Oct.10b: After the holiday weekend, I will send out information by email about scheduling Midterm Oral exams, which will be held in the week of Nov.02-06.
Oct.10: Since Monday 12th October is Thanksgiving holiday in Canada, there will be no lecture that day. Office hours which normally are held Mondays 3-4pm will be shifted to Tuesday; the revised timeframe is 4-6pm on Tuesday 13th October. Anyone who cannot make that Zoom meeting but needs to chat with me may email me to set up an individual Zoom meeting.
Oct.08: HW2 is posted.
Oct.05b: I thought you might enjoy this meme I saw on twitter on the weekend.
Oct.05: remaining scheduled office hours before the HW1 due date of 11am on Thursday are: today Monday 3-4pm, and tomorrow Tuesday 5-6pm. You can attend even if you don't want to ask any questions. Note: SymPy is a useful package for doing Q4 of HW1; it can easily handle calculus and matrices.
Sep.24: Here is the first homework assignment. It will be due by 11am on R08Oct.
Sep.24: please remember to fill out the brief Hello survey, and provide your Latin and Roman alphabets so the TA can decipher your handwriting. This was due last week.
Sep.17: Zoom meeting information for Friday tutorials is now up on the Quercus announcement page.
Sep.14: Lectures are MR11 and tutorials are F1. Office hours will be M3 and T5. For today's office hour, let's try using the same Zoom link and password as for lectures. If that doesn't work, I'll post a separate meeting link and password on Quercus.
Sep.07: UPDATES:
1. The Scholar Strike for Black Lives in Canada (SSBLC) will take place on Wednesday Sep.10 and Thursday Sep.11. To ensure that students who skip our first class to participate in it are not disadvantaged, I will not begin discussing physics material until the second class on Monday Sep.14. Our first day of class Sep.11 will be introductory only, and we will take nontrivial time to discuss how to make our course more inclusive. Since one of the SSBLC online teach-in events is scheduled for 11:00-11:30 on Thursday Sep.11, I will not mind if you come to our first class 20 minutes late.
2. I had hoped to hold an introductory tutorial on Friday 11th September, but have been made aware of some important clashes. So tutorials will begin on Friday 18th September. Thanks to everyone who let me know about clashes.

Special note on pandemic circumstances

The global COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented in my 50+ year lifespan, and constitutes a serious major disruption to all our lives, some more than others. I am very motivated to be careful with my own health (because of a genetic selective immune deficiency) and the health of my students and TA. Accordingly, I have decided to teach all-online for this semester, because I value human life and human health above anything else that happens at a university. Obviously, teaching and learning online is less than ideal, but I think we can all agree that doing so is a worthy sacrifice to keep each other alive and healthy.

Online interaction has a different quality to in-person interaction, which I miss dearly, as I imagine many of you also do. So I would like to extend to you a rock-solid guarantee: I will give all the lectures, I will attend all tutorials, and I will make myself available for individual consultation during office hours and by appointment, to give all my students sufficient options for interacting with me. Part of my preparation for this has involved testing various software options with other profs in the department committed to delivering the best possible teaching we can manage given the constraints we are all working under. For online lectures, tutorials, and office hours, I will use Zoom, with Bb Collaborate on Quercus as a backup, and possibly Microsoft Teams.

Privacy note: lectures will be recorded for asynchronous viewing by students in different timezones, including questions students may ask either audiovisually or in chat. Tutorials will be more heavily focused on interactive discussions between students and the TA (and me), and will not be recorded, in order to foster a greater sense of safety in asking questions. Please plan to attend both lectures and tutorials synchronously if you can reasonably do so, as ingesting videos passively after the fact tends to be less useful to learning GR for most students. I will do my best to support you regardless of your individual circumstances. I welcome feedback about how I can do better.