Huygens' Principle, Interference, and Thin Films

Lecture Description

Course Description

In addition to the traditional topics of mechanical vibrations and waves, coupled oscillators, and electro-magnetic radiation, this course also discusses musical instruments, red sunsets, glories, coronae, rainbows, haloes, X-ray binaries, neutron stars, black holes and big-bang cosmology.

Course Index

1. Periodic Phenomena
2. Beats- Damped Free Oscillations
3. Forced Oscillations with Damping
4. Forced Oscillation, Power at Resonance, and Transient Phenomena
5. Coupled Oscillators
6. Driven Coupled Oscillators and Cramer's Rule
7. Coupled Oscillators, Wave Equation, and Transverse Traveling Pulses and Waves
8. Traveling Waves, Boundary Conditions, Sound Waves, and Energy in Waves
9. Musical Instruments, Sound Cavities, and Normal Modes
10. Exam 1 Review
11. Fourier Analysis, Time Evolution of Pulses on Strings
12. Dispersion, Phase Velocity, and Group Velocity
13. Electromagnetic Waves, Plane Wave Solutions to Maxwell's Equations, and Polarization
14. Accelerated Charges, Poynting Vector, and Power
15. Doppler Effect, Sound, EM Radiation, Binary Stars, Neutron Stars, and Black Holes
16. Boundary Conditions at Perfect Conductors, Reflection, and Standing EM Waves
17. Wave Guides: Radiation and Sound
18. Boundary Conditions for Dielectrics, Index of Refraction, Snell's Law, and Total Internal Reflection
19. Exam 2 Review
20. Huygens' Principle, Interference, and Thin Films
21. Diffraction, Grating, Pin Holes, and Angular Resolution
22. Rainbows, Haloes, Coronae, and Glories
23. Farewell Special