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ALLAN ADAMS: Hi everyone.

Welcome to 804 for spring 2013.

This is the fourth, and presumably final time

that I will be teaching this class.

So I'm pretty excited about it.

So my name is Allan Adams.

I'll be lecturing the course.

I'm an assistant professor in Course 8.

I study string theory and its applications

to gravity, quantum gravity, and condensed matter physics.

Quantum mechanics, this is a course in quantam mechanics.

Quantam mechanics Is my daily language.

Quantum mechanics is my old friend.

I met quantum mechanics 20 years ago.

I just realized that last night.

It was kind of depressing.

So, old friend.

It's also my most powerful tool.

So I'm pretty psyched about it.

Our recitation instructors are Barton Zwiebach, yea!

And Matt Evans-- yea!

Matt's new to the department, so welcome him.

Hi.

So he just started his faculty position,

which is pretty awesome.

And our TA is Paolo Glorioso.

Paolo, are you here?

Yea!

There you go.

OK, so he's the person to send all complaints to.

So just out of curiosity, how many of you all are Course 8?

Awesome.

How many of you all are, I don't know, 18?

Solid.

6?

Excellent.

9?

No one?

This is the first year we haven't had anyone Course 9.

That's a shame.

Last year one of the best students

was a Course 9 student.

So two practical things to know.

The first thing is everything that we put out

will be on the Stellar website.

Lecture notes, homeworks, exams, everything

is going to be done through Stellar, including your grades.

The second thing is that as you may

notice there are rather more lights than usual.

I'm wearing a mic.

And there are these signs up.

We're going to be videotaping this course

for the lectures for OCW.

And if you're happy with that, cool.

If not, just sit on the sides and you

won't appear anywhere on video.

Sadly, I can't do that.

But you're welcome to if you like.

But hopefully that should not play a meaningful role

in any of the lectures.

So the goal of 804 is for you to learn quantum mechanics.

And by learn quantum mechanics, I

don't mean to learn how to do calculations,

although that's an important and critical thing.

I mean learn some intuition.

I want you to develop some intuition

for quantum phenomena.

Now, quantam mechanics is not hard.

It has a reputation for being a hard topic.

It is not a super hard topic.

So in particular, everyone in this room,

I'm totally positive, can learn quantum mechanics.

It does require concerted effort.

It's not a trivial topic.

And in order to really develop a good intuition,

the essential thing is to solve problems.

So the way you develop a new intuition

is by solving problems and by dealing

with new situations, new context, new regimes, which

is what we're going to do in 804.

It's essential that you work hard on the problem sets.

So your job is to devote yourself to the problem sets.

My job is to convince you at the end of every lecture

that the most interesting thing you could possibly

do when you leave is the problem set.

So you decide who has the harder job.

So the workload is not so bad.

So we have problem sets due, they're

due in the physics box in the usual places, by lecture,

by 11 AM sharp on Tuesdays every week.

Late work, no, not so much.

But we will drop one problem set to make up

for unanticipated events.

We'll return the graded problem sets

a week later in recitation.

Should be easy.

I strongly, strongly encourage you

to collaborate with other students on your problem sets.

You will learn more, they will learn more,

it will be more efficient.

Work together.

However, write your problem sets yourself.

That's the best way for you to develop and test

your understanding.

There will be two midterms, dates to be announced,

and one final.

I guess we could have multiple, but that

would be a little exciting.

We're going to use clickers, and clickers will be required.

We're not going to take attendance,

but they will give a small contribution

to your overall grade.

And we'll use them most importantly

for non-graded but just participation concept questions

and the occasional in class quiz to probe your knowledge.

This is mostly so that you have a real time

measure of your own conceptual understanding of the material.

This has been enormously valuable.

And something I want to say just right off

is that the way I've organized this class

is not so much based on the classes I was taught.

It's based to the degree possible on empirical lessons

about what works in teaching, what

actually makes you learn better.

And clickers are an excellent example of that.

So this is mostly a standard lecture course,

but there will be clickers used.

So by next week I need you all to have clickers,

and I need you to register them on the TSG website.

I haven't chosen a specific textbook.

And this is discussed on the Stellar web page.

There are a set of textbooks, four textbooks that I strongly

recommend, and a set of others that are nice references.

The reason for this is twofold.

First off, there are two languages

that are canonically used for quantum mechanics.

One is called wave mechanics, and the language,

the mathematical language is partial differential equations.

The other is a matrix mechanics.

They have big names.

And the language there is linear algebra.

And different books emphasize different aspects

and use different languages.

And they also try to aim at different problems.

Some books are aimed towards people

who are interested in materials science, some books that

are aimed towards people interested in philosophy.

And depending on what you want, get

the book that's suited to you.

And every week I'll be providing with your problem sets readings

from each of the recommended texts.

So what I really encourage you to do is find a group of people

to work with every week, and make sure

that you've got all the books covered between you.

This'll give you as much access to the texts

as possible without forcing you to buy four books, which

I would discourage you from doing.

So finally I guess the last thing to say

is if this stuff were totally trivial,

you wouldn't need to be here.

So ask questions.

If you're confused about something,

lots of other people in the class

are also going to be confused.

And if I'm not answering your question without you asking,

then no one's getting the point, right?

So ask questions.

Don't hesitate to interrupt.

Just raise your hand, and I will do my best to call on you.

And this is true for both in lecture,

also go to office hours and recitations.

Ask questions.

I promise, there's no such thing as a terrible question.

Someone else will also be confused.

So it's a very valuable to me and everyone else.

So before I get going on the actual physics

content of the class, are there any other practical questions?

Yeah.

AUDIENCE: You said there was a lateness policy.

ALLAN ADAMS: Lateness policy.

No late work is accepted whatsoever.

So the deal is given that every once in a while,

you know, you'll be walking to school

and your leg is going to fall off,

or a dog's going to jump out and eat your person standing

next to you, whatever.

Things happen.

So we will drop your lowest problem set score

without any questions.

At the end of the semester, we'll

just dropped your lowest score.

And if you turn them all in, great,

whatever your lowest score was, fine.

If you missed one, then gone.

On the other hand, if you know next week, I'm

going to be attacked by a rabid squirrel,

it's going to be horrible, I don't

want to have to worry about my problem set.

Could we work this out?

So if you know ahead of time, come to us.

But you need to do that well ahead of time.

The night before doesn't count.

OK?

Yeah.

AUDIENCE: Will we be able to watch the videos?

ALLAN ADAMS: You know, that's an excellent question.

I don't know.

I don't think so.

I think it's going to happen at the end of the semester.

Yeah.

OK.

So no, you'll be able to watch them later on the OCW website.

Other questions.

Yeah.

AUDIENCE: Are there any other videos

that you'd recommend, just like other courses on YouTube?

ALLAN ADAMS: Oh.

That's an interesting question.

I don't off the top of my head, but if you send me an email,

I'll pursue it.

Because I do know several other lecture series

that I like very much, but I don't

know if they're available on YouTube or publicly.

So send me an email and I'll check.

Yeah.

AUDIENCE: So how about the reading assignments?

ALLAN ADAMS: Reading assignments on the problem set every week

will be listed.

There will be equivalent reading from every textbook.

And if there is something missing,

like if no textbook covers something,

I'll post a separate reading.

Every once in a while, I'll post auxiliary readings,

and they'll be available on the Stellar website.

So for example, in your problem set, first one was posted,

will be available immediately after lecture

on the Stellar website.

There are three papers that it refers to, or two,

and they are posted on the Stellar website

and linked from the problem set.

Others?

OK.

So the first lecture.

The content of the physics of the first lecture

is relatively standalone.

It's going to be an introduction to a basic idea then is

going to haunt, plague, and charm us

through the rest of the semester.

The logic of this lecture is based

on a very beautiful discussion in the first few chapters

of a book by David Albert called Quantum Mechanics

and Experience.