Physics on your feet : Berkeley graduate exam questions, or, ninety minutes of shame but a PhD for the rest of your life! / Dmirty Budker, Alexander O. Sushkov.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Budker, Dmirty, author.

Sushkov, Alexander O., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Physics--Examinations, questions, etc.

Physics.

Genre:

Examinations.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (280 pages)

Edition:

Second edition.

Place of Publication:

New York, New York : Oxford University Press, [2021]

Summary:

This second edition contains a significantly expanded collection of physics problems covering the broad range of topics in classical and modern physics that were, or could have been, asked at oral PhD exams.

Contents:

Cover

Physics on Your Feet: Berkeley Graduate Exam Questions

Copyright

Dedication

Preface to the Second Edition

Preface to the First Edition

How this book came about

Other books

How to use this book

Acknowledgements

Contents

1 Mechanics, Heat, and General Physics

1.1 Bouncing brick

Solution

1.2 Slippery cone

1.3 Roach race

1.4 Spinning Earth

1.5 Mechanical oscillator as a force sensor

1.6 Hot-dog physics

1.7 Ostrich egg

1.8 Joker's pendulum

1.9 Slinky magic

1.10 Lightbulb and coal

1.11 Comfortable walking speed

1.12 Rotating dumbbell

2 Fluids

2.1 Bubble physics

2.2 Bubble and pressure

2.3 Holey bucket

2.4 Surprises in melting and solidification

2.5 Shallow-water and deep-water gravity waves

2.6 Tides

2.7 Boat speed limit (hull speed)

2.8 Floating in circles

2.9 Boat displacement

2.10 Temperature lapse in the atmosphere

2.11 Angler's dilemma

3 Gravitation, Astrophysics, and Cosmology

3.1 Olber's paradox: why is the sky dark?

3.2 Gravitational shift of clock rates

3.3 Photon fallout

3.4 Planck mass and length scale

3.5 Rotation of stars around the center of a galaxy

3.6 Ultralight dark matter

3.7 Detecting gravitational waves

3.8 Dark matter trapped in the Earth

4 Electromagnetism

4.1 Currents and magnetic fields

4.2 Electromagnet design

4.3 Field in a shield (with a coil)

4.4 Multipole expansion

Solution.

4.5 Energy in a wire

4.6 Earth's magnetic field angle

4.7 Refrigerator-magnet science

4.8 Spherical-cell magnetometer

4.9 Magnetic force on a superconducting magnet

4.10 Circuit view of atoms and space

4.11 Magnetic monopole

5 Optics

5.1 Rotating liquid mirror

5.2 Stacking lenses

5.3 Nanoparticle optics

5.4 Di raction angle

5.5 Di raction on an edge

5.6 Black-body radiation

5.7 Laser vs. thermal light source

5.8 Correlation functions for light and Bose condensates

5.9 Pulsed laser repetition rate

5.10 Beamsplitter

5.11 Rotating linear polarization

6 Quantum, Atomic, and Molecular Physics

6.1 Magnetic decoupling of spins

6.2 Level anticrossing

6.3 Bound states in a potential well

6.4 Hypothetical anomalous hydrogen

6.5 Time-reversal in quantum mechanics

6.6 Superconductivity vs. atomic diamagnetism

6.7 Atomic desorption

6.8 Lamb shift

6.9 Van der Waals interaction

6.10 Vacuum birefringence

6.11 Nonmagnetic molecule

6.12 Quantum mechanics of angular momentum

6.13 Light shifts

6.14 Optical pumping

7 Nuclear and Elementary-Particle Physics

7.1 The number of elements in the periodic table

7.2 Neutron anatomy

7.3 Nonexistence of the dineutron

7.4 Deuterium fusion

7.5 Lifetime of the ground-state para-positronium

7.6 Schwinger fields

7.7 Cherenkov radiation

7.8 Neutron optics

8 Solid-State Physics

8.1 Transistors

8.2 Magnetic domains

8.3 Damaging diamond

8.4 Nearest-neighbor defect in a crystal

8.5 Fermi velocity in a metal

8.6 Superuid transition of helium

8.7 Frustrated spins

Appendix A Maxwell's Equations and Electromagnetic Field Boundary Conditions

Appendix B Symbols and Useful Constants

B.1 Symbols

B.2 Useful constants

References

Index.

Notes:

This edition also issued in print: 2021.

Previous edition: 2015.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Print version: Budker, Dmitry. Physics on your feet.

ISBN:

0-19-187836-7

0-19-257978-9

OCLC:

1276858928