| PHYS 4421 | |
PHYSICS OF CONTINUUM MATTER:
Exotic and everyday Phenomena in the Macroscopic World
INSTRUCTOR: Predrag Cvitanovic'
TIME: Fall semester 2002, Tue, Thu 09:35-10:55 in Howey N209
TEACHING METHOD: Two lectures per week, homework sets, midterm and a final exam.
START: Tue, Aug 20 2002 in Howey N209
COURSE HOMEPAGE: www.cns.gatech.edu/PHYS-4421COURSE DESCRIPTION:
Continuum physics describes the macroscopic physical world around us, continuous and classical. The enormous progress of quantum physics in 20th century has almost eliminated this kind of physics from the core physics curriculum - still the modern developments in nonlinear science, biology, astrophysics, engineering demand increased mastery of its methodology. At the same time, new applications (biological fluids, plasmas, solid state physics, field theory) bring new perspectives into the subject, revealing the same fundamental principles underlying aspects of very diverse materials we deal with in the macroscopic world.
This course (new in GT curriculum) attempts to redress the balance. It offers a modern, unified introduction to the basic concepts and phenomenology of continuous systems.
The course is intended for physics, biomedical engineering, math, engineering and geophysics advanced undergraduates, starting graduate students. The mathematical prerequisites are modest and are developed further as the need arises. The course presupposes a knowledge of Newtonian mechanics and differential equations, with the equations of continuum mechanics derived from Newtonian particle mechanics. The basic concept is the concept of stress, valid for all continuous materials. The two tracks of the course are the two extremes in the world of continua: elastic solids (Hooke) and viscous fluids (Newtonian fluids). Emphasis is placed equally on intuition and formalism with the many examples from geophysics, astrophysics and other fields at the core of the presentation.
TEXT: B. Lautrup
Continuum Physics, Exotic and everyday Phenomena in the Macroscopic WorldThis textbook (to be published in 2003 by the Institute of Physics) is perhaps the only modern advanced undergraduate introduction into the subject. The author has kindly agreed to make the current version available to the students in this course. Have a glance at the few sample chapters that give the flavor of the content and the style:
Preface
Chapter 5: Buoyancy
Chapter 21: Whirls and vorticesCOURSE EMAIL LIST: Subscribe to the course e-mail distribution even if you are only interested in a subset of the topics (you are welcome to sit in on lectures of interest) - send e-mail with text (and no header):
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last revised July 17 2002 -- Predrag Cvitanovic', predrag.cvitanovic@physics.gatech.edu