Overview

The Experimental Physics 3 course is introducing you to topics related to electromagnetic waves, optics and matter waves. We will cover experiments, some basic mathematical description and also interactive visualizations in our lecture. Below you find the planned contents of our course. Besides the physical contents, this website also contains a number of additional interactive features. These features are provided by so-called Jupyter notebooks and the contained Python code. If you want to know more about those possibilities, have a look at the sections on Jupyter notebooks in the Course Introduction.


Lecture Contents

  1. Ray Optics
    1.1.Reflection
    1.2.Refraction, Total internal reflection, Rainbow challenge
    1.3.Mirrors, Lenses, Prisms
    1.4.Optical instruments
    1.4.1.Telescope
    1.4.2.Microscope
    1.5.Dispersion
    1.6.Imaging errors
    1.6.1.Spherical aberration
    1.6.2.Coma
    1.6.3.Astigmatism
    1.6.4.Chromatic aberration
  2. Wave Optics
    2.1.Wave equation
    2.1.1.Plane waves
    2.1.2.Spherical waves
    2.2.Interference
    2.2.1.Coherence
    2.2.2.Interferometers
    2.3.Huygens principle
    2.3.1.Diffraction
    2.3.2.Single and double slit
    2.3.3.Diffraction grating
    2.3.4.Optical resolution
  3. Electromagnetic Waves
    3.1.Electromagnetic spectrum
    3.2.Plane and spherical electromagnetic waves
    3.3.Energy transport and Poynting vector
    3.4.Polarization
    3.5.Reflection and transmission
    3.6.Total internal reflection
    3.7.Fresnel formulas
    3.8.Hertz dipole
  4. Foundations of Quantum Physics
    4.1.Particle properties of light
    4.1.1.Photo effect
    4.1.2.Black body radiation
    4.1.3.Photon gas
    4.1.4.Planck’s radiation law
    4.2.Structure of matter
    4.2.1.Thomson model of the atom
    4.2.2.Rutherford scattering
    4.2.3.Rutherford and Bohr atom model
    4.3.Matter waves
    4.3.1.Heisenberg uncertainty relation
    4.3.2.Wave function
    4.3.3.Probability interpretation of the wave function
    4.3.4.Schrödinger equation
    4.3.5.Quantum states
    4.3.6.Potential box
    4.3.7.Harmonic oscillator
    4.3.8.Tunneling
    4.3.9.Correspondence principle