From the stability of the human genome to the processor that is in your smart-phone and everything in between, quantum mechanics is at the crux of all modern science; not to mention that some of its consequences are simply mind-blowing! Yet, some aspects of quantum mechanics are so counterintuitive that to some it may seem hard to understand. To remedy this, we have designed a class which aims to leave the student with a deeper understanding and appreciation of quantum mechanics from both a practical and abstract standpoint. Starting from the basic framework of QM we will cover topics like: entanglement, tunneling, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, wave-particle duality, and more. Each topic will be accompanied with a theoretical explanation, a description of an experimental realization and/or a technological application. By the end of this class hopefully we will have inspired you to further your understanding of this crazy thing called quantum mechanics, and also we hope we will have given you the tools to do so!

In our opinion, Feynman’s book QED is the golden standard of popular science writing. It is the only book that we know of that explains quantum mechanics in a way that is neither superficial (as in most documentaries you see on TV) nor mathematically sophisticated. In this course, we will read QED and use it as a springboard to discuss topics in modern physics, like path integral methods, Feynman diagrams, and quantum theories of things like E&M, with more mathematical precision. By the end of the course, we will have fascinating answers to simple but deep questions like “why do objects travel in straight paths?”

Learn some of the most fascinating classical physics Newton didn’t know, including chaos, relativity, waves, and field theories.

Statistical physics is about making precise statements about imprecise systems. We might want to describe a gas without writing down the positions and velocities of 10^23 molecules or describe a magnet without keeping track of all the spins of the electrons in the material. We might even want to understand some of the features of black holes without knowing everything (or anything, really) about string theory! We will begin this course by introducing ideas like entropy, the Boltzmann distribution, the partition function, and phase transitions in the context of the Ising model, which describes magnet-like systems. Along the way we will explore applications of these ideas in mathematics and computer science.