Department of Physics

Common Exam Student Preparation: Summer 2007

This website has been established for graduate students preparing to take the Common Exam (CE) this fall and for the faculty members of the CE Preparation Committee. It includes information on the meeting schedule; problems assigned/discussed during meetings; CE format, schedule, and names of committee members; and any other information deemed pertinent. Please send your suggestions for what to include here to Brian Saam (saam@physics.utah.edu). Also notify Brian if you would like your name added to the e-mail list of students in CE prep.

Announcements

Committee Members

Preparation Schedule/Problems

Common Exam Schedule/Format

Announcements

June 18th: The schedule for faculty members at the sessions has changed slightly as updated below. The next session will be held on Wednesday June 20th at 1pm; the topic is electricity and magnetism. You can get the written problem from Jackie Hadley in JFB 201-D (note: Mary Ann Woolf will be on vacation this Wednesday) and proceed to JFB 219 to start working on it.

June 19th: As Brian Saam is taking over as interim department chair, there will be some additional changes in the schedule of faculty (some noted below; more updates later). Mary Ann Woolf will take over responsibility for running this website and coordinating the sessions.

Members of the Common Exam Preparation Committee 2007

This is NOT the group responsible for the exam. Two of these five committee members will meet weekly with students to facilitate the discussion of practice problems (e-mail addresses are given, to be followed by @physics.utah.edu).

Brian Saam, Chair (saam)

Charles Jui (jui)

Mikhail Raikh (raikh)

George Williams (gaw)

Yong-shi Wu (wu)

Members of the Common Exam Committee 2007

This IS the group responsible for the exam. It is a good idea to know the courses they teach and their areas of expertise in physics, as questions often arise from these sources.

Wayne Springer, Chair (springer)

Christoph Boehme (boehme)

Paolo Gondolo (paolo)

Stephan LeBohec (lebohec)

Oleg Starykh (starykh)

Meeting Schedule/Problems

Meetings will take place on Wednesdays starting at 1pm in 219 JFB. A written problem (that you presumably have not seen before) will be available at that time for you to work on. Two faculty members from the prep committee will join you at around 1:30-1:40 pm to facilitate a discussion of the problem and the physics involved. Topics will rotate from Classical Mechanics (CM) to Eletricity and Magnetism (EM) to Quantum Mechanics (QM) to Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics (SM). The schedule here is subject to change. (Links become active after the date of the session.)

May 16th: Class. Mech. (G. Williams and Y.-S. Wu) Problem, 16 May.pdf

May 23rd: Class. Mech. (G. Williams and Y.-S. Wu) Problem, 23 May.pdf

May 30th: Class. Mech. (C. Jui and M. Raikh) Problem, 30 May.pdf

June 6th: E&M (E. Mishchenko* and C. Jui) Problem, 6 June.pdf

June 13th: E&M (C. Jui and M. Raikh) Problem, 13 June.pdf

June 20th: E&M (M. Raikh and E. Mishchenko) Problem, 2 0June.pdf

June 27th: Quantum (M. Raikh and A. Rogachev) Problem, 27 June.pdf

July 4th: HOLIDAY

July 11th: Quantum (G. Williams and John Lupton) Problem, 11 July.pdf

July 18th: Quantum (G. Williams and John Lupton) Problem ,18 July.pdf

July 25th: Stat. Mech. (C. Jui and A. Rogachev) Problem, 25 July.pdf

August 1st: Stat. Mech. (M. Mostafa and C. Jui) Problem, 1 August.pdf

August 8th: Stat. Mech (M. Mostafa and M. Raikh) Problem, 8 August.pdf

August 15th: Review (C. Jui) Problem, 15 August.pdf

Common Exam Schedule/Format

The exam will happen on one day (Saturday, August 18th 2007). The exam consists of two sessions: Session 1 begins at 9:00 a.m. and ends
at 12:00 noon and Session 2 begins at 2:00 p.m. and ends at 5:00 p.m. The exam is held in the rotunda of the lecture hall (round building). You are to bring only a pencil or pen to the exam. All other materials will be provided. There will be NO oral component to this exam.

General topics include:

Representative texts include Griffiths (both the Quantum and E & M texts). I will try to get a more complete list; a decent guide would be the textbooks used in th upper division undergrad courses here.

University of Utah Content Disclaimer

Please send e-mail to saam at physics dot utah dot edu if you experience problems with this website.

Last modified: 19 June 2007.