Course overview ^

PHYS 1P96 provides a first university-level introduction to many important and exciting concepts in physics, including fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, electricity and magnetism, optics, relativity, and quantum mechanics. By successfully finishing this course, you will gain fundamental insight into how our universe works, and will be prepared for more advanced studies in physics and all other areas of science.

As this course is a continuation of PHYS 1P95: Physics for Scientists and Engineers I, students must take PHYS 1P95 before they can register in PHYS 1P96, unless they obtain special permission from the instructor. Please note that PHYS 1P96 contains considerably more material than PHYS 1P95, and will require you to understand about twice as many concepts in the same amount of time.

The official textbook for this course is OpenStax University Physics, which has 3 volumes:

• Volume 1: Mechanics, Waves and Acoustics.
• Volume 2: Thermodynamics, Electricity and Magnetism.
• Volume 3: Optics, Modern Physics.

All 3 volumes are available for free online at OpenStax. This textbook contains all of the material in the course, aside from occasional bonus material that will be introduced in lectures. Please see the course outline below for information regarding which parts of the textbook will be covered in the course.

IMPORTANT: Announcements from the professor, containing crucial information and ongoing updates about the course, will be posted throughout the term on Microsoft Teams. To make sure you get notified of these announcements, please go to the course Teams site, click on the three dots to the right of "Announcements", then go to "Channel notifications" and choose the option "All activity", as shown in this screenshot:

Please also bookmark the course Teams site in your browser, install Teams on your phone, and enable notifications on the phone app!

It is your responsibility to follow the announcements and read all of them thoroughly on a regular basis. No accommodations will be made for students who fail to satisfy the course requirements due to not reading the professor's announcements!

Course syllabus ^

The course website also doubles as the course syllabus. If you need the syllabus in PDF format, simply click here to print it and choose "Save to PDF".

About the professor ^

The professor for this course is Dr. Barak Shoshany (ħe/ħim). I did my BSc in mathematics and physics at Tel Aviv University in Israel and my MSc and PhD at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario. I then taught at the University of Toronto for a short time. I joined Brock University as Assistant Professor in September 2020, and I also regularly teach scientific computing at McMaster University.

I am a theoretical, mathematical, and computational physicist. My research focuses on the nature of time and causality in general relativity and quantum mechanics, as well as symbolic and high-performance scientific computing. I'm always happy to talk about my research, and theoretical physics in general, so please feel free to ask me about it, both in and out of class!

I also love teaching. I developed 10 full-term undergraduate and graduate courses from scratch since 2020, including 5 physics courses, 3 astronomy courses, 1 scientific computing course, and 1 mathematics course. My devotion to teaching won me the Brock University Faculty of Mathematics & Science Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2023.

When I'm not teaching or doing research, I love composing music, playing video games, board games, and tabletop role-playing games, and reading or watching science fiction and fantasy. Please see my personal website for details on my research, teaching, talks, media interviews, music compositions, and more.

My office is located in room E219 in the Mackenzie Chown Complex (MC). I do not have fixed office hours. You are welcome to drop by my office unannounced whenever you want, but I'm not there too often. If you would like to meet, please email me at bshoshany@brocku.ca, and I would be happy to schedule a meeting, either online or in my office.

Schedule and lectures ^

The course will take place during the Winter (D3) 2025 term, from January 6 to April 4, 2025. The deadline for withdrawal without academic penalty is March 6. There will be two 2-hour lectures every week:

• Wednesdays 19:00-21:00,
• Fridays 19:00-21:00.

The following lectures will be canceled:

• Wednesday, February 19 and Friday, February 21, due to Reading Week.

In total, we will have 24 lectures and 48 lecture hours. The lectures will take place in person in STH 217 (South Block room 217) For your convenience, here is the full list of lecture days, times, and locations:

• Lecture 1: Wednesday, January 8, 19:00-21:00, STH 217
• Lecture 2: Friday, January 10, 19:00-21:00, STH 217
• Lecture 3: Wednesday, January 15, 19:00-21:00, STH 217
• Lecture 4: Friday, January 17, 19:00-21:00, STH 217
• Lecture 5: Wednesday, January 22, 19:00-21:00, STH 217
• Lecture 6: Friday, January 24, 19:00-21:00, STH 217
• Lecture 7: Wednesday, January 29, 19:00-21:00, STH 217
• Lecture 8: Friday, January 31, 19:00-21:00, STH 217
• Lecture 9: Wednesday, February 5, 19:00-21:00, STH 217
• Lecture 10: Friday, February 7, 19:00-21:00, STH 217
• Lecture 11: Wednesday, February 12, 19:00-21:00, STH 217
• Lecture 12: Friday, February 14, 19:00-21:00, STH 217
• Lecture 13: Wednesday, February 26, 19:00-21:00, STH 217
• Lecture 14: Friday, February 28, 19:00-21:00, STH 217
• Lecture 15: Wednesday, March 5, 19:00-21:00, STH 217
• Lecture 16: Friday, March 7, 19:00-21:00, STH 217
• Lecture 17: Wednesday, March 12, 19:00-21:00, STH 217
• Lecture 18: Friday, March 14, 19:00-21:00, STH 217
• Lecture 19: Wednesday, March 19, 19:00-21:00, STH 217
• Lecture 20: Friday, March 21, 19:00-21:00, STH 217
• Lecture 21: Wednesday, March 26, 19:00-21:00, STH 217
• Lecture 22: Friday, March 28, 19:00-21:00, STH 217
• Lecture 23: Wednesday, April 2, 19:00-21:00, STH 217
• Lecture 24: Friday, April 4, 19:00-21:00, STH 217

Contacting the professor ^

Students are invited to contact the professor via the following methods:

• All non-personal questions related to the course, whether about the material, lectures, textbook, logistics, exams, or anything else, should be posted publicly on Microsoft Teams, in the General channel.
• All personal questions involving private information that cannot be posted publicly on Teams, such as grades or medical issues, should be sent to me directly via email to bshoshany@brocku.ca or via direct message on Teams.

Personal vs. non-personal questions

There are several reasons for asking you to post your question on Teams:

• Posting questions publicly on Teams allows other students to see the questions and benefit from the answers.
• Creating new posts on Teams encourages other students to add their own followup questions and triggers valuable discussions about the subject matter that would not have happened otherwise.

I promise to answer all questions posted on Teams as soon as I can - emailing me or messaging me directly won't get you an answer any faster!

If you have a non-personal question that you don't want to ask in public on Teams, you can email me your question, but please let me know why you are asking it in private, otherwise I will just ask you to post it on Teams instead. Please note that if I believe my answer could be of use to other students, I may post your question and my answer on Teams (without mentioning your name), unless you explicitly ask me not to.

Other important rules

If you email me, please make sure to do so from your Brock email account, not from your personal account, since otherwise I have no way to verify your identity. I will not be able to share or discuss any personal details with you if you contact me from your non-Brock email.

Please only message me once; do not send me the same message both by email and on Teams. This will not get me to respond any faster. I get notifications for both emails and Teams messages on my phone as soon as they are received, so if you do this I'll simply get two separate notifications for the same message, which will just annoy me and make me less likely to respond to your message quickly.

IMPORTANT: In my experience, many of the questions asked by students throughout the term already have answers either on the course website or in Teams discussions and announcements. Therefore, before you ask a question, please check if perhaps it already has an answer on this website or on Teams - that way, you won't have to wait for a response.

Lastly, please do not email the professor with any lab-related matters. Any inquiries regarding the labs must be sent directly to the Senior Lab Coordinator.

Course outline ^

The course material will consist of the following chapters and sections of the textbook, OpenStax University Physics, volumes 1, 2, and 3:

• Volume 1:
  • Part I (Mechanics):
    • Chapters 1-13: Already covered in PHYS 1P95.
    • Chapter 14 (Fluid Mechanics)
  • Part II (Waves and Acoustics):
    • Chapters 15-17: Already covered in PHYS 1P95.
• Volume 2:
  • Part I (Thermodynamics):
    • Chapter 1 (Temperature and Heat)
    • Chapter 2 (The Kinetic Theory of Gases)
    • Chapter 3 (The First Law of Thermodynamics)
    • Chapter 4 (The Second Law of Thermodynamics)
  • Part II (Electricity and Magnetism):
    • Chapter 5 (Electric Charges and Fields)
    • Chapter 6 (Gauss's Law)
    • Chapter 7 (Electric Potential)
    • Chapter 8 (Capacitance)
    • Chapter 9 (Current and Resistance)
    • Chapter 10 (Direct-Current Circuits)
    • Chapter 11 (Magnetic Forces and Fields)
    • Chapter 12 (Sources of Magnetic Fields)
    • Chapter 13 (Electromagnetic Induction)
    • Chapter 14 (Inductance): Skipping.
    • Chapter 15 (Alternating-Current Circuits): Skipping.
    • Chapter 16 (Electromagnetic Waves)
• Volume 3:
  • Part I (Optics):
    • Chapter 1 (The Nature of Light)
    • Chapter 2 (Geometric Optics and Image Formation)
    • Chapter 3 (Interference)
    • Chapter 4 (Diffraction)
  • Part II (Modern Physics):
    • Chapter 5 (Relativity)
    • Chapter 6 (Photons and Matter Waves)
    • Chapter 7 (Quantum Mechanics)
    • Chapter 8 (Atomic Structure) If time permits.
    • Chapter 9 (Condensed Matter Physics): Skipping.
    • Chapter 10 (Nuclear Physics): If time permits.
    • Chapter 11 (Particle Physics and Cosmology): If time permits.

All chapters marked as "already covered in PHYS 1P95" are required as mandatory background material for PHYS 1P96, and all 1P96 quizzes and exams will assume that you know all of the 1P95 material. Please make sure to review this material if needed!

Lecture slides ^

The slides for the lectures correspond to textbook chapters, to keep things organized. They will be posted here once we finish each chapter.

Weekly progress ^

As the course progresses, this section will be updated to indicate what we learned each week, and in particular, what material will be covered in the weekly quizzes and final exam.

If a textbook section is listed here, then the entire section will be covered in that week's quiz and in the final exam. This includes any parts of that section that may have been omitted or skimmed during the lectures due to lack of time. Students are expected to study any omitted parts on their own, and encouraged to ask questions on Teams or during the next lecture if anything is unclear. Conversely, any chapter or section not listed here will not be covered in the quizzes or final exam.

Homework problem sets ^

There will be a homework problem set every week, which will include problems related to the material learned that week. Each problem set will be posted on Teams after the last lecture of the week. The homework problem sets will not be graded, and will not contribute to your final grade directly, but solving them will be crucial for your success in the exams.

The homework problem sets are not graded, and you do not need to submit them to anyone. The problem sets can be solved either alone or together with other classmates, and discussion of the problem sets with other students, whether on Teams, or in private, is strongly encouraged. Solutions will not be posted by the professor; instead, students are encouraged to post their own solutions on Teams and get feedback from the professor or from other students.

At the end of each chapter of the textbook there are many practice questions, both conceptual and quantitative. Solving as many questions from the relevant textbook sections as possible will greatly improve your success in the quizzes and the final exam.

The quiz may contain questions that are unrelated to the homework questions, and conversely, not all homework questions are necessarily related to questions that will be in the quiz. It's up to you to make sure you understand all the material we learned during the week, not just the material related to the homework questions. This will be important for the final exam.

IMPORTANT: When solving quantitative questions, whether from the homework or elsewhere, it is important to always provide complete analytical derivations of any quantities you need to calculate. "Analytical" means all variables must remain undetermined, i.e. just letters, without putting any numbers into any of the variables. In the quizzes and final exam you will be required to provide analytical derivations without any specific numerical values given to you. All necessary steps of the derivation must be provided for a full mark.

Labs ^

All lab-related materials and information can be found on Brightspace. If you have any questions about the labs, please contact the Senior Lab Coordinator. Please do not contact the professor regarding any lab-related matters!

Quizzes and exams ^

Weekly quizzes

There will be an in-person quiz every week except the first week. The quiz will always take place during the first hour of the first lecture of the week, that is, on Wednesday at 19:00-20:00. Once the quiz is done, we will proceed with learning new material during the second hour of the lecture.

Each week's quiz will review the material of the previous week, meaning that quiz 1 will review the material learned in week 1, and so on. Furthermore, there will be no quiz covering the last week; that material will only be covered in the final exam.

Each quiz will last exactly 1 hour. The quizzes will consist of freeform questions. You must show your work to get full marks on your answer. You may get partial marks if your final answer is incorrect but your derivation is mostly correct.

Final exam

In addition, this course will have an in-person final exam. It will be in the exact same format as the quizzes, but it will last 2 hours, and will cover the material of the entire course.

The date and time for the final exam will be announced once the university scheduling team determines it.

Missed exams ^

If you miss a quiz or exam, please email the professor within 7 days. Your email should explain why you missed the exam and include any necessary proof, such as a doctor's note.

• If you missed a quiz and I accept your reason for missing it, that quiz will then not count towards your final course grade, meaning that the weight of all other quizzes will be increased appropriately. There will not be an option to take the quiz at a later date, since there is a quiz every week and we cannot have two different dates for every single quiz.
• If you missed the final exam and I accept your reason for missing it, the exam will then not count towards your final course grade, meaning that it will be determined only by the quizzes and labs. There will not be an option to take the exam at a later date; however, if a large number of students missed the exam, a makeup exam may be scheduled at the professor's discretion.

If you are late to a quiz or exam, you will not get any extra time, so please make sure to be at the exam room at least 15 minutes before the beginning of the exam!

Allowed material and academic integrity ^

During the quizzes and exams, you may use notes containing any material of your choice, printed or handwritten, up to 10 double-sided papers for each quiz and up to 100 double-sided papers for the final exam. You may also use a physical calculator, but not an app or a graphing calculator.

Computers, phones, tablets, smart watches, and other digital devices cannot be used in the exams. Any students found in possession of a digital device of any kind (other than a calculator) during the exam will be considered as having used the device, and will be disciplined accordingly.

You will not be given any formulas in the exam, so it is highly recommended to include in your notes any formulas that might be relevant. However, you do not need to include the numerical values of any constants in your material; if any numerical values are required to solve the question, they will be given in the exam.

There will be no ready-made formula sheets, since preparing a formula sheet on your own is a great way to summarize the material for yourself and organize it in your head! However, you are free to use formula sheets prepared by others if you want; the choice of material to bring to the exam is completely up to you, as long as it's limited to the amount indicated above.

Since you can bring your own material, you do not need to memorize anything. The exam is not meant to test your memory. It will test your level of understanding of the physics concepts you learn in the course, and your ability to apply them correctly and efficiently to concrete problems.

Students are expected to fully comply with Brock University's academic integrity policy. A variety of measures will be taken to detect cases of cheating in both online and in-person exams. If a student is found to have committed academic misconduct, disciplinary measures will be taken. Please see this page for more information about academic integrity.

Grading scheme and requirements ^

The total grade for the course will be calculated as follows:

• The quiz grades will be averaged, and the average will be worth 50% of the total grade. If you miss any quizzes for legitimate reasons, they will not be taken into account when calculating the average. However, if you do not have a legitimate reason to miss a quiz, it will count as a zero in the average calculation.
• The final exam will be worth 30% of the total grade.
• The final lab grade will be worth 20% of the total grade. The lab grading scheme will be announced separately by the Senior Lab Coordinator.
• The weighted average of the quizzes, final exam, and labs will be rounded to the nearest integer, with 0.5 rounded up.

As for all courses at Brock, the final grade (after taking into account all of the above) must be 50% or more in order to pass the course.

Exam preparation ^

The best way to prepare for the quizzes and the final exam is to:

• Attend all of the lectures and actively participate in them. I give ample time for students to ask questions in my lectures, so if anything at all is unclear, you should feel free to ask me about it. The classroom is a safe space, and there are no bad questions!
• Thoroughly read and understand the relevant sections of the textbook. If there is anything you do not understand in the textbook, please feel free to ask about it during the lectures, post about it on Teams, and/or discuss it with your classmates.
• Each week, solve the homework problem sets and as many as possible of the textbook end-of-chapter problems corresponding to the sections learned that week. Post your solutions on Teams for other students to see, and discuss the questions with other students and with the professor on Teams. If you encounter any issues, post about them on Teams.
• Practice writing complete analytical derivations of any quantities you need to calculate in a question. "Analytical" means all variables must remain undetermined, i.e. just letters, without putting any numbers into any of them. In the quizzes and final exam you will be required to provide such derivations, so make sure to practice this as much as possible.

Accommodations ^

Brock University is committed to fostering an inclusive and supportive environment for all students and will adhere to the Human Rights principles that ensure respect for dignity, individualized accommodation, inclusion, and full participation. The University provides a wide range of resources to assist students, as follows:

• If you need any accommodations related to exams, such as extra time, because of a disability or an ongoing health or mental health condition, please contact Student Accessibility Services (SAS) at askSAS@brocku.ca or (905) 688-5550 ext. 3240 as soon as possible to arrange your accommodations.
• If you require academic accommodation on religious grounds, you should make a formal written request to the professor during the first two weeks of the term, or as soon as possible after a need for accommodation is known to exist. Religious accommodations are not granted automatically, and will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
• If you are experiencing mental health concerns, contact the Student Wellness and Accessibility Centre. Good2Talk is a service specifically for post-secondary students, available 24/7, 365 days a year, and provides anonymous assistance: visit the website or call 1 866 925-5454. For information on wellness, coping, and resiliency, click here.
• If you have been affected by sexual violence, the Human Rights & Equity Office offers support, information, reasonable accommodations, and resources through the Sexual Violence Support & Education Coordinator. For information on sexual violence, visit Brock's Sexual Assault and Harassment Policy or contact the Sexual Violence Support & Response Coordinator at humanrights@brocku.ca or (905) 688-5550 ext. 4387.
• If you have experienced discrimination or harassment on any of the above grounds, including racial, gender or other forms of discrimination, contact the Human Rights and Equity Office at humanrights@brocku.ca.

Use of artificial intelligence ^

The technology currently marketed as artificial intelligence (AI) is not actually "intelligent". Chatbots and virtual assistants such as ChatGPT, Copilot, Google Gemini, and Meta AI, as well as services such as Google's "AI overview", should not be used as study resources in this or any other course.

These services are based on a type of machine learning model called a large language model (LLM). In simplified terms, an LLM model is trained an a specific dataset, usually extracted from the Internet, and can then be used to generate similar data.

When you ask a chatbot a question, it doesn't actually "know" the answer in any meaningful way; it simply uses mathematical modeling to predict the most likely next word, and keeps doing that until it forms an answer.

Nowhere in this process is the answer generated by the model being checked for factual accuracy. This leads to an effect called "hallucination", where LLMs commonly generate false or even misleading information, but present it as fact. This can sometimes be obvious, but it is more likely to be subtle, for example a key incorrect sentence hiding inside an otherwise correct answer.

Another issue with LLMs is that they cannot do math. This is because they are trained to understand language, not math. If you ask an LLM any kind of question involving non-trivial math, it will almost certainly give you an incorrect answer. This makes LLMs a very unreliable resource for fields such as math, physics, and astronomy.

Since LLMs often produce incorrect information, students are very strongly advised NOT to use any AI chatbots or services when studying for this course. Please use only reliable scientific sources such as Wikipedia or published textbooks and research articles written by humans. If you use LLMs, you are very likely to get incorrect information that will decrease your chances of succeeding in this course.

Intellectual property notice ^

Any and all course materials created by the instructor in this course, including but not limited to notes, slides, homework problems, homework solutions, exams, exam solutions, and photo, audio, and/or video recordings, are the intellectual property of the instructor.

Any student who, without the instructor's express consent, publicly posts or sells the instructor's work, or takes a photo, audio, and/or video recording of the instructor's lectures, will be charged with misconduct under the university's Academic Integrity Policy and/or Code of Conduct, and may also face adverse legal consequences for infringement of intellectual property rights.