PMU199Y

[Your professor]

Fall Test heads-up

Our Fall Test is to be held in-class two weeks after the Fall Oral Presentations, in Week 10 of the semester. Since we are about to begin Week 7, I suggest that you begin studying for the Test now if you have not already done so. Note that you will be permitted to bring in a one-sided handwritten aid sheet, so it would be wiser to focus on summarizing the physics concepts you have learned rather than on rote memorization. Writing yourself a set of concise good notes is a useful Test studying technique I recommend.

You will have 50 minutes to do the Test, i.e. it will be time pressured. You will pick three out of four questions to answer, and write 1/2-2/3 of a page for each. All concepts covered in class in Weeks 1-7 and Week 9, i.e. everything from Powers of Ten to the Wavelike Nature of Quanta, are fair game. (Week 8 oral presentation topics are off limits.) My lecture notes are the definitive source for what you need to know, not Greene's textbook. The Test's composition will reflect the amount of time we spent on each topic according to our syllabus:-

  1. Distance and time scales; Powers of ten; The Standard Model of Particle Physics.
  2. From Newton to Einstein; Maxwell, Einstein, and the speed of light.
  3. Black Holes; Hawking Radiation.
  4. Quantum weirdness; The wavelike nature of quanta.

Do not decide which questions to answer in advance: study for all of them. You might not get the question you expect!

More details about the strict Test rules, along with previous Test papers from previous years for you to practice on, will be posted two weeks before the Test. I suggest that you concentrate on preparing for the Oral Presentation until then, and do some Test studying as well.