Welcome to PHYS 3310. Waves are ubiquitous. Understanding them is essential to
understanding the physical universe. You have already learned some
wave physics in your previous courses but here we will study them
systematically with an eye to learning the most general
principles governing their behavior.
A vastly important property of the physical universe is that physics laws appear the same in any uniformly moving reference frame. This has surprising consequences which we learn about when we study the special theory of relativity in the second portion of the course.
Graded homework will typically be issued weekly. I encourage you to work together on the problems since discussion aids comprehension. However, the final write-up must be your own work. Submitted homework assignments that are suspiciously similar will annoy me. There will be 3 regular take-home tests as well as a comprehensive final exam.
Your final grade will be based on a weighted sum of your performance
on homework, tests, and the final exam according to the scheme
below. Individual assignments do not receive a letter grade. The
assignments weights are:
