Work Corner and Self-Learning Modules

It has not yet been another week, but I thought I just want to write something for now. Just reached home from office (around 6pm) and this is after logging out just a few minutes past 5pm (the end of office hours). These days I tend to limit myself (if possible) in the office in just the hours needed. In the past, I used to work long hours when I am still involved in administration. Those days are over (thankfully) and I'm looking forward to my retirement. Some thought I am giving up my scientific pursuit and some even say I am no longer active scientifically. Not sure where they got the idea. Just this afternoon, I had a meeting with my PhD student. Perhaps what I want to do now and in the future will not quite fit what the university wants. In fact, I am looking forward to do things that are essentially worthless with respect to the usual KPIs of the university, but will be very valuable for me scientifically. Indeed now I feel more comfortable doing work at home. Had wished that the idea of working from home to be continued after the previous stretch of MCO but I guess it is too early for us to adopt such a paradigm. While my home is still under renovations, I have got my own sweet corner for me to work in my room (I guess, for the rest of my life) - see pic below.

The table was set a bit high and I could not find an office chair that will reach that height. Instead I had to get a stool (with a small back rest). It reminds me of working at a lab bench.

We have reached our final week of lectures but I have plenty of topics to cover for both subjects. I guess I will have to do some recorded lectures for those topics. Yesterday and today, managed to put out self-learning modules for the two subjects, where the students get to review some related papers in a group (each will have to mention what are their contributions) and relate them to materials covered in the lectures. I was supposed to give these some time near the mid-semester break (before or after) but time was not on my side to do so. What are they reviewing? They are listed below:

Statistical Mechanics:

1) Ralph Baierlein, “The Elusive Chemical Potential”, Amer. J. Phys. 69 (2001) 423-434.

2) Hajime Inaba, “The Development of Ensemble Theory – A New Glimpse at the History of Statistical Mechanics”, Eur. Phs. J. H 40 (2015) 489-426.

3) S.H. Mannaerts, “Extensive Quantities in Thermodynamics”, Eur. J. Phys. 35 (2014) 035017.

4) Zijun Yan, “General Thermal Wavelengths and Its Applications”, Eur. J. Phys. 21 (2000) 625-631.

5) Christon Krimizis-Tsatsoulis, “Trouton’s Rule Mysteries: An Attempt to a Better Understanding”, J. Chem. Thermodynamics 152 (2021) 106256.

6) K. Schoenhammer & V. Meden, “Fermion-Boson Transmutation and Comparison of Statistical Ensembles in One Dimension”, Amer. J. Phys. 64 (1996) 1168-1176.

7) Robert S. Knox & William W. Parson, “Entropy Production and the Second Law in Photosynthesis”, Biochimica et Biophysica Acta 1767 (2007)1189-1193.

8) Ayed Alsharafat & Noureddine Chair, “Factorization of the Bosonic Partition Function”, Phys. Lett. A 381 (2017) 1118-1122.

9) U. Klein, “The Statistical Origins of Quantum Mechanics”, Phys. Res. International 2010 (2010) 808424.

10) W.J. Mullin & J.P. Fernandez, “Bose-Einstein Condensation, Fluctuations and Recurrence Relations in Statistical Mechanics”, Amer. J. Phys. 71 (2003) 661-669.

11) Robert E. Kelly, “Thermodynamics of Blackbody Radiation”, Amer. J. Phys. 49 (1981) 714-719.

12) P. Justice, E. Marshman & C. Singh, “Student Understanding of Fermi Energy, the Fermi-Dirac Distribution and Total Electronic Energy of a Free Electron Gas”, Eur. J. Phys. 41 (2020) 015704.

Mathematical Methods in Physics:

1) S.F. Duki, T.P. Doerr & Y-K. Yu, “Improving Series Convergence: The Simple Pendulum and Beyond”, Eur. J. Phys. 39 (2018) 065802.

2) Edward Levy, “A Matrix Exponential Approach to Radioactive Decay Equations”, Amer. J. Phys. 86 (2018) 909-913.

3) R.S. Mackay, “Use of Stokes’ Theorem for Plasma Confinement”, Phil. Tran. R. Soc. A 378 (2020) 20190519.

4) A. Bostan & P. Dumas, “Wronskians and Linear Independence”, Amer. Math. Monthly 117 (2010) 722-727.

5) T.R. Cameron, “The Determinant From Signed Volume to the Laplace Expansion”, Amer. Math. Monthly 126 (2019) 437-447.

6) M.E. Luna-Elizarraras, M. Shapiro, D.C. Struppa & A. Varac, “Bicomplex Numbers and Their Elementary Functions”, CUBO Math. J. 14 (2012) 61-80.

7) J. Pujol, “Hamilton, Rodrigues, Gauss, Quaternions and Rotations: A Historical Reassessment”, Comm. Math. Analysis 13 (2012) 1-14.

8) M. Hamada, “The Minimum Number of Rotations About Two Axes for Constructing an Arbitrarily Fixed Rotation”, Roy. Soc. Open Sci. 1 (2014) 140145.

9) A. Galantai & Cs. J. Hegedus, “Jordan’s Principal Angles in Complex Vector Spaces”, Numer. Lin. Alg. Appl. 13 (2006) 589-598.

10) I.E. Leonard, “The Matrix Exponential”, SIAM Rev. 38 (1996) 507-512.

11) D.V. Redzic, “The Operator Ñ in Orthogonal Curvilinear Coordinates”, Eur. J. Phys. 22 (2001) 595-599.

12) G. Panou & R. Korakitis, “Analytical and Numerical Methods of Converting Cartesian to Ellipsoidal Coordinates”, J. Geod. Sci. 11 (2021) 111-121.

The idea is to enrich the students with new knowledge beyond what is usually found in the class and perhaps a brief introduction to research. I really hope these spur some interest.