PHY484S

Relativity Theory II (2020-21) -- PHY484S/1484S

Important Things

Classes are scheduled for MR10, i.e., Mondays and Thursdays from 10:10-11:00 (Toronto time). They will be held on Zoom; please see Quercus announcement for details. Weekly office hours will be held M3 at the same Zoom coordinates, i.e., Mondays from 15:10-16:00.

Syllabus (topics, grading, etc.)
Calendar of events
Lecture notes [.pdf, rough draft, will be updated]
Computing info + advice
Deadlines and accommodations
Contact the prof

Announcements

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

Apr.18: yes, Final Project presentations tomorrow will take place in the usual class Zoom. See you then. :)
Apr.12: please submit your Final Project materials to me directly by e-mail. I thought the 10am deadline was implied, but several students thought it meant they could submit until midnight, so I will allow that.
Mar.30: Thanks to the eagle-eyed student who noted a small typo in Q4.1. I also spotted another small typo in Q4.4. Both have now been fixed - please redownload HW4 here.
Mar.29: Until I manage to type up the lecture material today into the lecture notes: here are slides I discussed today.
Mar.25b: Thanks to everyone for sending me your date/time constraint matrices regarding the Final Project presentations during exam period. I managed to find a solution where almost everyone got a green timeslot. (For one person I had to allocate them a yellow timeslot, because less than 10% of their timeslots were green.) To make it work, I had to split off the grad student cohort from the undergraduate cohort; they will be back-to-back on different days. Please see the Quercus announcement for details.
Mar.25a: Homework 4 is posted -- I hope you find it fun messing around with gravity in extra dimensions! Since I accidentally posted HW4 three days late, the deadline is shifted by three days to Thu.08.Apr. To give you a bit of breathing room, the Final Project report deadline is also shifted, to Mon.12.Apr.
Mar.19b: Thank you to the eagle-eyed student who pointed out the typo I made on one group of the Christoffels for Q3.4 of HW3 on Piazza! I have uploaded a corrected version here.
Mar.19: please note, since almost nobody is coming to office hours, I cannot justify regularly scheduling them. If you have questions about course material or homeworks, please ask for a half-hour Zoom appointment instead.
Mar.09: Homework 3 is posted.
Feb.09: Homework 2 is posted. Since I posted it late, I am extending the due date to 10am on Thu.25.Feb.
Feb.08: Here are a couple more details about the Final Project. Your presentation will be 30 minutes, composed of about 25 minutes of uninterrupted speaking and about 5 minutes of questions. Your report should be a maximum of ten pages, not counting references or title page, with 1 inch margins and 12 point font.
Feb.04: It is almost time to decide on your Final Project topic. I would like to have these firmed up before Reading Week, so that after it (where there is a gap between HW2 and HW3 in the schedule) you can get stuck into starting your research. Topic ideas should ideally be self-generated; if you are having trouble coming up with something, book a Zoom with me and we can discuss it. Please email me with a list of your top three ideas for a topic to research. I will respond with guidance about which I think is most suitable. If multiple people want to do the same topic, first come first served. As soon as I approve them, I will post topics that are already taken on Quercus.
Feb.03: Don't panic about my change of email address! The old one still works; a forwarder is in place for a few months. If you emailed me about Grace Days for HW1 before the deadline and your email didn't bounce, your request is approved.
Jan.25: In Q1.2 of HW1, I assume $a_0=1$.
Jan.21: Homework 1 is posted. It is due by 10:00am on Thu.04.Feb.2021.
Jan.18: To help me make classes more worthwhile for you, please fill in this brief survey on Quercus before 9pm on Wednesday. It won't take long - thanks in advance!
Jan.11b: A new announcement has been added to Quercus regarding signing up for Piazza.
Jan.11a: It was great to meet you in class today! ☺️ Among the 17-ish people who attended, the least inconvenient time to hold office hours for the class (and me!) turned out to be M3, i.e., Mondays from 15:10-16:00. I will also hold special office hours F3, i.e. 15:10-16:00, on the Fridays before the Monday HW2, HW3, and HW4 due dates. HW1 will be due on a Thursday, so the Monday office hour should suffice for late-ish questions about that. I will use the same Zoom coordinates for office hours as for lectures. [Note: I will not hold office hours today (Jan.11) because we have hardly covered any material yet.]
Jan.09: If you want to audit this course rather than enrol in it, and want to attend Zoom classes, send me email from your official UofT address and I will add you to Quercus.
Jan.08: I look forward to meeting you all on Monday morning. Please see Quercus announcement for details.
Dec.15: If you're an undergrad having any trouble registering, look at section LEC9101, or LEC2001 if you're an Engineer.