Physics 143a

<ul>
<li><p>Can you take it if you have credit for Physics 15a and 15b?</p></li>
<li><p>How hard is it in the fall? What is the course curriculum like?</p></li>
<li><p>Did you enjoy it?</p></li>
</ul>

<p>pretty please :P</p>

<p>Are you an incoming freshman? What’s your math and physics background?</p>

<p>I’m a cross-reg from MIT. </p>

<p>My math background: Diff eq, Linear algebra, Multi-var</p>

<p>Physics: Mechanics and Electricity/Magn i.e. your 15a and 15b.</p>

<p>I’m just curious, how hard it is. It seems like a fun class to take. I also want to know how its structured, etc.</p>

<p>I’m curious as to why you want to take quantum mechanics at Harvard instead of MIT? My daughter just completed 143a under Dr. Vafa. I think 143a is normally taken after you have completed the full sequence of (16 or 15a)/15b/15c. I suspect the answers to your other questions would be dependent upon which professor is running the course.</p>

<p>I would like if people posted both Dr. Vafa and Feldman’s.</p>

<p>thinking about it because, 143a covers some more material than MIT’s 8.04
Also, want exposure to a different school.</p>

<p>I also eventually want to take Physics 145 which has no real equivalent at MIT. 8.276 is somewhat equivalent, but Harvard’s seem’s better structured.</p>

<p>My daughter found Vafa to focus on the mathematics without giving much physical justification of the material. She did not like the textbook, Liboff and said that you should also get a copy of Griffiths. She has no input of Feldman, but Gabrielse gets good reviews and she likes working in his lab group.</p>

<p>I haven’t taken it, but I have a close friend (a freshman) who took it just this spring. He found it challenging, but not so much of the physics concepts but because of the extensive math computations - and he’s very, very good at math.
I can’t say anything more specific because I don’t know much/anything about quantum or the kind of math involved, but that’s the impression I got from him.</p>