Center for Emerging Energy Sciences

                     

Instruction

Dr Duncan has taught a plethora of classes throughout his career ranging from introductory courses for undergraduates to complex topics for graduate-level courses.

Dr Duncan has taught throughout the physics curriculum, including the introductory sequence of university physics, introduction to special relativity and to quantum physics, graduate condensed matter physics, graduate electromagnetism, interdisciplinary courses in self-organized criticality and in biological physics, and senior laboratory. He led the development of a new core curriculum course called “Chemistry and Physics at the Nanometer-scale”, which he first taught during the Fall Semester, 2006 as part of our new Nanoscience and Microsystems graduate degree program. He has advised and co-advised many post-docs, graduate students, and undergraduate students at the University of New Mexico, Caltech, and Texas Tech University.  Many of his former students now hold permanent positions in academia, industry, and in the national laboratories within the United States

PHYS 1408.01   SPRING 2023 (Syllabus)

An undergraduate-level course on introductory physics.

The course will cover kinematics, statics, dynamics, rotational kinematics and rotational dynamics, fluids, gravity, and oscillations.  This course emphasizes Newton's Laws and their applications.  Most of the course materials, including homework assignments, can be found on the course LMS.

Texts: R. A. Serway and J. W. Jewett, Jr., Physics for Scientists and Engineers. You must buy the WebAssign website access to do the on-line homework, and an electronic version of this text is available at no additional charge on this website. I recommend that you utilize this online version of your textbook, but paper copies are available for purchase in the bookstores if you prefer. The Laboratory Manual is available in the University Bookstore during the first two weeks of the term. You must purchase your lab manual BEFORE you will be admitted to the first meeting of the lab. Note that the labs start on the week of January 30, 2023.

Course Goal: The essential Learning Outcomes and Competency standards are listed below. Everyone who completes this course in good standing will have accomplished them to some degree. I want this course to be profoundly useful to you professionally. I want to introduce you to the wonderful way in which scientists and other objective professionals think. We strictly follow the Scientific Method. Through a reductionist approach, pioneered primarily by Isaac Newton, you will learn how to analyze and solve mechanical problems. Intricate phenomena that were once mysterious to you will become easy to understand. Keep up, ask when you are confused, and center your efforts on developing a genuine understanding, not simply on getting a grade to check off a requirement within your degree program. You will be amazed by how your understanding expands, and how hard problems will become easy for you to solve. In short, work hard, push yourself, experience the profound joy of rigorous scientific thought, and if you honestly seek help when you get confused, then I promise that you will quickly become genuinely awesome! This, more than anything else, is what I want you to achieve for yourself in this class.

A tentative weekly calendar of activities and reading materials is present in the course syllabus.