[Fhsst-physics] New member progress and assignments

[Mark Horner]

Hi everyone

Firstly I'd like to welcome  a bunch of new people who are working on 
physics:

- Anne & Giovanni who are going to help out with modern physics

- Lindsay, Vivian, JoEllen, Michelle & Laura who have been holding
weekly meetings in San Fran to write the optics chapter

The optics gang seem to be doing very well, they have had two meetings
already and they are making great progress which is wonderful.

An update, I have received a very large contribution from Gerald for the 
HPM chapter
but I haven't had time to write detailed comments out yet - they will 
happen this week and
that chapter is nearing completion now.

If Anne & Giovanni can write the Modern Physics chapter then there is 
only Electronics which is
still needs to be written and then the book is pretty much done. I have 
another EM editing hackathon
in Berkeley this coming weekend.

Now the assignment for Anne & Giovanni

(Please look at the book online - esp. chapters from Forces onwards to 
see the current style and layout http://www.fhsst.org/fhsstphy.pdf ):

Modern Physics shouldn't be very long and you could probably take care of it
in a couple of days between you, though finding the time is the hard part!

The syllabus mentions the following points:
- transmission and scattering of light
- absorption and emission spectra
- lasers
- photoelectric effect

It falls under the broad topic of Matter and Materials: Optical 
Phenomena and Properties of Materials in the syllabus document.

I don't like the order they have and what I propose (but am open to 
suggestions/comments/criticisms) is that we
do the following:

-1) The Atom is studied in the previous grade so they should be familiar 
with energy levels and they will
know the differences between gases, liquids and solids.

0) Wave-like properties of light
1) Wave-particle duality and the photoelectric effect
     -> this shows that materials absorb light and involves the energy
           levels of the substance absorbing the light and the 
quantisation of photons
2) Absorption Spectra
      -> we've just done absorption by metals now we do absorption by 
gas, use
            light from distant stars passing through gas clouds in 
space (ignore redshifts etc.)
3) Emmision Spectra
      -> not only do things absorb in discrete amounts but they emit in 
discrete amounts
            mention that we can use this to study stars etc. and 
mention fluorescent lights etc.
4) Lasers
      -> have to tie the emission and absorption stuff together in this 
section, with standing waves!

Additional material: we include essays on SALT and Lasers for real world 
context - we'll find
volunteers to write these at a later date.

Worked examples (these are just my rough ideas over a quick cup of 
coffee so please feel
free to be creative and critical but always remember the audience!):
- we must have as many worked examples as possible - its tough for 2, 3 
and 4 but
at least it should be pretty easy for the photoelectric effect
- for the absorption spectra and emission spectra we can just have 
examples with a type of gas and
some of its energy levels and ask them to work out what frequencies are 
absorbed
- for the lasers we can have some substances with energy levels and have 
a worked example in which
they have to work out the frequency of the laser (assuming no doppler 
broadening, no transverse or
longitudinal modes etc - just a really simple case of working out energy 
level differences etc. Then
we can introduce the standing waves in the laser cavity  - but lets see 
how it goes.)

Thats it for now. I will send you a template file and our latex 
definitions in another email.

Cheers,

Mark

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Mark Horner                                                                                                         
Jabber/AIM/Yahoo/Skype/Google:   marknewlyn                                                               

Co-author:
http://www.fhsst.org
http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/fhsst

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