PHYSICS 315

Course Outline

Course Title: Physics of materials

Academic Year: 2004 Spring

Instructor: Birger Bergersen

Credits: 3 Lecture hrs/week: 3 No scheduled labs or tutorials.

Prerequisites: PHYS 203 or 313 or CHEM 201 or 205, corequisite MATH 215

Required Text: Lecture notes on the web. Postscript version. PDF version..

Description: Crystal structure, elasticity and phonons, elementary electronic transport, defects, alloys, liquid crystals and polymers.

Structure of crystalline solids

Bravais lattices and lattices with a basis.

Reciprocal lattice.

Crystal structure determination.

Energy considerations. Molecular, ionic, covalent and metallic systems.

Stress and strain.

Defects. Vacancies and impurities. Dislocations

Strength of materials.

Harmonic chain. Diatomic chain.

Lattice vibrations in three dimensions.

Debye model.

Electrons

Sommerfeld model. Low temperature specific heat.

Drude model. Dielectric function of metals. Plasmons

Elementary transport theory.

Liquid crystals. Nematics smectics and cholesterics. Devices.

Polymers. The freely jointed chain. Self-avoiding walks.

Membranes.

Mark Distribution

Assignments 20%

Special assignment 10%

Midterms 20%

Final 50%

WEBSITES

Material for other courses taught by Birger Bergersen