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PHY F111 (Mechanics Oscillations and Waves): I have taught the first half of the course involving mechanics. Here is the handout. Lectures were mostly delivered using blackboard with some use of slides to introduce and recap the salient aspects. Here are the slides for chap 2 and 4 (chapter 1 is not in the course) and for chap 6 and 8. A couple of problems from chapter 6 (6.40 and 6.41) were very demanding and hence I prepared detailed notes on their solutions emphasising different methods and their connection with other problems in the book. I have prepared some handwritten notes which can be found here. I gave a special lecture whose content could not be `smuggled' into the conventional curriculum structure but which I thought was important. Here are the Slides. Demonstrations are typically a part of my lectures for there is no better way to experience a concept directly. While I was explaining how structures such as arches strong and hence ubiquitous, I used a crate of eggs to demonstrate the same. An egg is after all an arch! So I made a student (all of 65 kg) stand upright on a crate of eggs. Students shot a video of the same. It can be found here.
PHY F412 (Introduction to Quantum Field Theory): handout, handwritten notes (almost complete). The handwritten notes are zeroth order draft of my thought process before the lectures. Notes mostly follow the textbook by Lancaster and Blundell but here and there you will find elaborations on various aspects. I claim no originality in content of this highly complex and time worn subject. Notes are mostly an assembly of things I have learned from various places. The only purpose of the notes was to clarify my own thought process to myself. Here are the slides of first few lectures of the course when I taught it back in 2015.

Courses Taught

Physics-1 (what is essentially now Mechanics Oscillations and Waves)
Physics-2 (Introduction to Electrodynamics covering first half of Griffiths’s book)
Introduction to Particle Physics (from Griffiths and Halzen-Martin)
Theoretical Physics (A five unit course covering classical and quantum field theory. I mostly followed Hatfield's book for the quantum field theory part with aspects of classical field theory and lorentz group covered from Ryder's book and Srednicki's book.)
Quantum Mechanics-1: About a third of the course was taught from the absolutely brilliant book by Shin-Itiro Tomonaga's volume-1 on Old Quantum Theory. Remaining two-third from Bransden and Joachian. Here are the slides of first few introductory lectures. For most courses I tend to give first few lectures on slides. This gives me more space to give a detailed introduction and an overview of the subject. Rest of the course is entirely delivered using blackboard.
First year physics lab (mandatory for all science and engineering students).
Solid state and Modern Physics Laboratory (for third year students)

Misc

During Feb-March 2011 I gave a series of seven 2-hour lectures in an informal "Saturday Discussion Forum" on aspects of symmetry. These lectures have nothing to do with the content of the celebrated book "Aspects of Symmetry" by Sidney Coleman. I just wanted to talk about a few assorted topics which can broadly fall under the umbrella of "Aspects of Symmetry". I have not preserved the notes but the abstract of each lecture can be found here.

Thoughts on teaching

I will share some thoughts (essentially some notes from a personal diary I maintain):

``I can only explain it to you and not necessarily make you understand things; for my explanation is only a story of how I have made sense of things. To understand, you must make sense of things yourself -- experience it directly; yourself. It is possible that in your quest for understanding you are almost there, in which case my 'explanation' may help you past that penultimate layer of understanding. Not to forget, this assumes that I have made sense of things and you are almost there. Does it prove the futility of teaching in the process of learning? Not in the least. It only shows how grossly misunderstood is this thing called understanding and our take on teaching and learning. Good teaching is not as much about explaining, as much it is about inspiring. The only way to inspire is to recount a personal story of the discovery of understanding (or whatever you make of it). Such a teaching is not a guided tour to adventure climb to the summit -- but only a snapshot of the view from the summit and an account of how the teacher made it. If the account is a true story of personal experience, it will inspire a climb. ''

BITS Pilani

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Courses in Current Semester

Courses Taught

Misc

Thoughts on teaching

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