More details provided in the syllabus.

Midterm Exam

For preparation, I am providing the midterm exam from Fall 2015 and the practice exam that I gave to students. The form of our in-class midterm (on Tuesday, October 4 at 11:00) will be similar.

• Fall 2015 Midterm Exam— pdf (test paper)
• Practice Midterm — pdf (test paper)

Now that you have written the midterm, here are links to the test and solutions:

• Fall 2016 Midterm Exam — pdf (test paper) / pdf (solutions)

Final Exam

The final exam is scheduled for Tuesday, December 8 at 12:00. The exam is closed-book. It covers material from the first nine chapters of Kittel. This includes the material tested on the midterm exam (crystal structure, xray diffraction, phonons) as well as the subsequent material on electronic band structure.

Below are two final exams from a course I previously taught. The content is slightly different, but they’re a useful study guide. I’ve also included a link to last year’s Phys 725 final.

1. 2012 final — pdf
2. 2013 final — pdf (exam) / pdf (solutions)
3. 2015 final — pdf (exam)

Lectures

1. Introduction — pdf
2. Symmetry breaking and ordered phases — pdf
3. Solids, crystallinity, and Bravais lattices — pdf — see Kittel Ch. 1
4. Scattering and experimental determination of crystal structures – pdf — see Kittel Ch. 2
5. Cohesion and bonding — pdf — see Kittel Ch. 3, pp. 47–-70
6. Complex structures — pdf — see Kittel Chs. 19 and 22
7. Lattice vibrations — pdf — see Kittel Chs. 4 and 5
8. Free electron gas — pdf — see Kittel Ch. 6, pp. 131–147
9. Models of nearly-free and tightly-bound electrons — pdf — see Kittel Ch. 7; Ch. 9, pp. 221–230
10. Tight-binding — pdf
11. Ab initio band structure calculations — see Kittel Ch. 9, pp. 232–239
12. Semi-classical dynamics of band electrons — see Kittel Ch. 6, pp. 147–153; Ch. 8, pp. 191–198
13. Experimental probes of the Fermi surface — see Kittel Ch. 9, pp. 242–251
14. Semiconductors — pdf – see Kittel Ch. 8, pp. 200–213