Materials

Section syllabus

Week 1: Special Relativity

    Worksheet, solutions

Week 2: More SR + some General Relativity

    Worksheet, solutions

Week 3: Tidal Forces

    Worksheet, solutions

Week 4: Effective potentials, Lagrange points, Accretion disks

    Worksheet, solutions

Midterm 1: (my) review questions

Week 5: Distances, Magnitudes, Dust

    Worksheet, solutions (Only 1, 3, and 4 are applicable.)

Week 6: ISM, Dust

    No worksheets this week. We talked about the ISM, HI, HII, molecular H, and observations of galaxies.

Week 7: Rotation curves

    Worksheet, solutions

Week 8: Dark Matter

    No worksheet this week. We talked about evidence for DM, what different types of DM are (MACHOs, WIMPs), and how we can detect DM (seeing the dynamical effects, indirect detection, and direct detection). We also talked briefly about the basics of particle physics -- the particles of the Standard Model, and a bit about how they behave and interact.
    I showed a dark matter map made in the COSMOS field using weak gravitational lensing (c. R. Massey/NASA/ESA), and some nice particle physics primer graphics dealing with the Standard Model.

Midterm 2: review questions

Week 9: Galaxies (part I)

    No worksheet this week. We reviewed some stuff on the midterm. We also talked about the Faber-Jackson and Tully-Fisher relations, and how they relate to the distance ladder. We reviewed the full distance ladder.
    Recapped that "early type" galaxy = elliptical, and "late type" galaxy = spiral/disk.

Week 10: Galaxy relations & Dynamical Friction

    Worksheet, solutions

Week 11: Cosmic Distance Ladder

    Worksheet, solutions

Week 12: Cosmology: Part I

    Mostly we talked about relevant equations and definitions for cosmology, and how the single component (dust/matter only) universe can be extended to cover multiple component universes.

    A worksheet for a universe that's radiation only: (we didn't do it, but it might be helpful to look over it at home) -- Worksheet, solutions

Week 13: Cosmology: Part II

    More overview of cosmology, focusing on the important equations: Friedmann equation, acceleration equation, equation of state.

    The full, proper manipulation of the Friedmann equation that I was bungling in section is written up in the soln for Prob 1a. Let me know if it's still confusing.

    Worksheet, solutions

Resources

Special Relativity:

Spacetime physics : introduction to special relativity
Edwin F. Taylor, John Archibald Wheeler.
(Copy in Phys/Astro library reserves: QC6 .T35 1992)

Cosmology:

Introduction to cosmology
Barbara Ryden.
(Copy in Phys/Astro library reserves: QB981 .R93 2003)

Plotting:

Links for using python and its packages numpy and matplotlib.pyplot. Also some information on other plotting programs.

General interest:

Scale of the Universe -- a nice visual size comparison all the scale in the universe, from the Planck length to the observable (and estimated) size of the universe. It has a slider, and lots of nice cartoons!