Here are the slides for an undergraduate lecture I gave today. The slides also include the derivations I gave by hand on the document viewer.
For historical background, I found a book chapter from Out of the Crystal Maze, interesting and helpful.
Some fascinating context concerning Arnold Sommerfeld. Over a period of 32 years, he built up an amazing school of theoretical physics in Munich. He mentored seven future Nobel laureates. However, sadly, when he retired in 1934 from a Chair in Theoretical Physics, it took four years to replace him because of interference from the Nazi Party. Even worse, in the end, Wilhelm Muller, a Nazi loyalist, was appointed. According to Wikipedia
"Müller, an aerodynamicist, had not been thought of as a theoretical physicist before this time, and opposed the "new" theoretical physics promoted by scientists such as Albert Einstein. His appointment is seen by historians as political, and during his tenure he would teach only classical physics"

No comments:
Post a Comment