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This is another new tutorial topic for me! The tutorial falls in the early part of S207's Book 7. Therefore I only really need to consider  material on reasons physicists developed quantum theory, wave-particle duality, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and the one-dimensional time-independent Schrodinger equation for square wells and barriers.

I want to emphasise physical thinking as a means of getting into the maths. The material on the Schrodinger equation is quite mathematical and complex.

I decide to focus on the role of standing waves. These could be waves in a glass of wine (or cup of coffee), or in a skipping rope. I want to show how the confinement of the waves leads to discrete wavelength values, which then give rise to discrete energy values - quantization.

I sketched some one-dimensional standing waves on a rope, and wrote down expression for the possible wavelengths in terms of the length of the rope. Then I put these values into sine and cosine wave functions. These are the permitted waves that can 'stand' on the string.

To prepare the actual tutorial material I started to build a PowerPoint presentation.  Individual slides were prepared by making use of MS Paint (sketching diagram and graph axes), constructing a series of sine and cosine graphs with Excel, and preparing images  of equations in the MS Word equation editor. Student interaction was designed in with some simple quiz questions, by asking students to sketch curves onto my graph axes, and by asking students to do their own algebra.

A copy of the PowerPoint is available here.

The S207 (The physical world) tutorial is face-to-face for Book 6 (Dynamic fields and waves). It will be followed a couple of week later with an Elluminate sesion.

The topics the students should have covered at this point are time-varying magnetic fields and induction, waves and ray optics.

The TMA has questions on induction, diffraction and relativity.  I plan to leave relativity to the Elluminate session.

Last year my tutorial reviewed some tricky questions from the preceding TMA, and included a diffraction experiment for the students to carry out.

I decided that there is no need this time to review the previous TMA. I should provide something on the electrical work - emphasing physical principles.

I also found an old exam question on the use of the lens equation, which I think is instructive for sign conventions and selection of rays for ray tracing. I might extend this into a wider discussion of optics - and perhaps take along a telescope.

My own interferogram software might be used to illustrate wavefronts.

I will also take a spectroscope to allow students to look at spectra.

[6 march 2013]