Exam#

We will close this course with an exam in form of a final project. This final project shall be on a topic of your choice or on one of the topics we provide as example topics. Each individual student is required to hand in a Jupyter Notebook. No group work is allowed for the final project.

The final project is in the form of a portfolio exam as it consists of two parts, which will be equally weighted:

1. Jupyter notebook containing the final project

Notebooks shall follow the following outline

  • Introduction You introduce into the problem you are covering with your notebook and motivate what your are going to do. The Introduction should also cover a basic theoretical description for the problem to be solved.

  • Results & Discussion You develop the code for your problem and discuss and anotate the individual steps in your notebook. It is important that you discuss the individual results highlighting their consequences.

  • Summary You summarize your findings.

Grading: Notebooks will be graded based on:

  • structure of the notebook (outline, citations, …)

  • quality of the code (use of functions, classes, modules, function of the notebook)

  • quality of the plots (axis labels, readability of the labels)

2. Video explaining the notebook

The videos shall

  • explain what topic you have chosen and why

  • explain how you tackled the problem

  • show the main results

  • summarize what you think you have achieved

  • be not longer than 5 min

Grading: Videos will be graded based on:

  • quality of the presentation (structure, oral and visual presentation)

  • sticking to maximum time

The deadline for handing in the project is September 1, 2024

Please submit your projects via email to Andrea Kramer, firstname.surname@uni-leipzig.de.

Since many of you asked for some guiding topics and I as well hope that you do not submit a simulation of planetary motion, here are some topics, though some of them might be for the advanced physicist.

Mechanics#

  • planetary motion (of course)

  • the Brachistochrone, first find out what it is, and then simulate it

  • N-coupled pendula and mechanical waves

  • elastic/inelastic collisions

  • spinning top

Thermodynamics/Statistical Physics#

  • ideal gas law from microscopic particle motions and wall collisions

  • Maxwell deamon, find out what it is and simulate

  • entropy from microstates

  • Carnot cycle

  • Vicsek model, find out what it is and simulate

Optics#

  • Caustics: ray tracing through spherical surfaces with paraxial approximation

  • Caustics: ray tracing through spherical surfaces without paraxial approximation

  • imaging errors, aberations

  • ray tracing of a prism with wavelength dependent refractive index

  • light propagation through and optical fiber

Electrodynamics#

  • thin film interference

  • electromagnetic wave propagation through thin films (Fresnel coefficients)

  • double slit experiment with light

  • grating diffraction, grating resolution

  • scattering of an electron on a Coulomb potential (classical)

  • array of freely rotating magnets

Quantum Mechanics#

  • wave packet in a periodic potential

  • scattering of an electron on a Coulomb potential (quantum mechanical)