Physics 424 Links: Spring 2015

• The National Institute of Standards and Technology sponsors a lot of work with magnetic materials. One software project is the OOMF project (Object Oriented MicroMagnetic Framework). A PowerPoint presentation on OOMMF explains it it more detail.

• The Nobel Prize in 2014 was awarded for the invention of a useful blue LED. This article gives some good scientific background.

• The first Brillouin zone of an FCC lattice from Graz University of Technology. Check out the paper cut-out pattern if you want to make your own 3D model. This is essentially the same as Fig. 13.6 in our text.
• Another nice set of figures is at this site, part of the strangely-named but sometimes useful Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics
• Some band structure pictures from a North Carolina State University MSE 704 class. Compare to Fig. 13.7 in our text.
• Wikipedia has a nice article and set of pictures describing the Bravais Lattices in two and three dimensions.
• Walter Smith (the author of our Phys 218 text) has a song about the Bravais Lattices (here are the lyrics at his PhysicsSongs.org web site.

• Physical Review article measuring specific heats of metals at low temperature. (See Fig. 2.5 in the text.)
• The United Nations General Assembly has declared 2015 as The International Year of Light and Light-Based Technologies.
• The Nobel Prize in Physics 2014 was awarded jointly to Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura "for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources".

• Solid-State Physics: An Introduction to Principles of Materials Science,by Harald Ibach, Hans Lüth
• Solid-State Physics: Introduction to the Theory, by James Patterson, Bernard Bailey
• Solid state physics by J. R. Hook, H. E. Hall
• Solid State Physics: Principles and Modern Applications, by John J. Quinn, Kyung-Soo Yi

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Getting Started with Mathematica

To obtain a student copy of Mathematica, visit the following ITS web site: https://help.lafayette.edu/mathematica/students.

There are a variety of on-line tutorials available for Mathematica. I recommend going to Wolfram.com and exploring their on-line resources. Some students have reported the following to be useful:

• "Hands-on Start": A series of screencasts that walk you through many different aspects of Mathematica, with a good balance between overview information and specific, detailed information that allows you to actually accomplish something quickly.
• These screencasts are part of the Getting Started channel, which is one of many channels available in the Wolfram Screencast & Video Gallery.
• Many more resources are available in the Learning Center.

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Constants, Units, and Uncertainty

The National Institute of Technology and Standards maintains a useful page with the current best values for many fundamental constants, at http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Constants/.

The July 2014 issue of Physics Today included an interesting article about a proposed revamping of the standards used for many fundamental constants. You can read about it in the article A more fundamental International System of Units.

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