Ideas of Physics (103-0-1)
Instructors
Chris Jacobsen
847/467-2703
Technological Institute Building (2145 Sheridan Road), Room F-247
Meeting Info
Parkes Hall 223: Tues, Thurs 2:00PM - 3:20PM
Overview of class
Modern society is reliant on energy use, with great benefits for human health, quality of life, and economic activity. We begin with a brief review of how we use energy, both in the USA and worldwide; and survey our present sources of energy (including fossil fuels and renewable sources). Economics drives society-scale solutions! Next, we take a look at the climate challenges associated with fossil fuel use, from the perspective of basic physics (Plank's blackbody radiation law, and Arrhenius' 1896 inferences from infrared spectroscopy) and considerations of Earth's geological history (including inferences from isotopic markers). We then examine the basics of nuclear physics, including key insights from Albert Einstein, Ernst Rutherford, Lise Meitner, and others which provide a basic understanding of nuclear fission and fusion. Following a short look at the history of both nuclear power and nuclear weapons, we examine both historical and recent developments in nuclear power, including both slow and fast neutron reactors, and the new wave of nuclear power startups. We briefly review the causes and consequences of nuclear accidents, the health effects of radiation including natural background sources present since life began, and potential strategies for the reprocessing and storage of nuclear waste. The goal of the course is to learn the relevant background information.
Registration Requirements
None. No math beyond basic high school algebra (as required for undergraduate admissions at Northwestern). This class is aimed at students from across the university; it is not intended only for science or engineering students
Learning Objectives
There will be approximately five homework assignments involving basic information gathering and simple
calculations, and each student will be asked to make a single 1 minute in-class presentation on information or a perspective related to the course. Midway through the course, students will propose a topic for a final paper of 5-7 pages in length, which they will then discuss in a 15 minute scheduled individual meeting with the course instructor during finals week.
Class Materials (Suggested)
There is no textbook for the course; instead, pointers will be provided to reputable information sources from industry, government, and technical societies (as well as books and scientific papers for optional follow-up reading). All lectures will be recorded, with video and lecture notes made available as PDF files.
Class Notes
This tentative schedule for the course will certainly evolve during the quarter!
Tuesday, Sep. 16
L1: Course overview: topics, how much math, discussion, homeworks, papers and oral summary.
Thursday, Sep. 18
L2: Quantifying energy and power: distinguishing between the two. Unit conversion, averages per person in the USA and elsewhere, trends over the past two centuries. Correlation between energy usage and wealth, and health. World population trends.
Tuesday, Sep. 23
L3: A deeper dive into energy use: transportation (cars, trains, airplanes), shipping (trucks, trains, and ships), industry. Daily and yearly cycles of energy use.
Thursday, Sep. 25
L4: The very basics of the nucleus: protons and neutrons, isotopes, mass differences, and E=mc2. Energy per atom from fusion, fission, and nuclear decay. Nuclear fusion and the sun. Nuclear decay and geothermal energy.
Tuesday, Sep. 30
L5: Chemical energy: energy per bond for bond types. Energy per mass and per volume for various chemical fuels (such as coal, oil and its refined products, and natural gas). Stoichiometry and the outputs of fuel burning (mostly H2O, CO2, N2). Storage of chemical fuels (gases, liquids, and solids).
Thursday, Oct. 2
L6: Energy storage. Batteries: disposable (e.g., alkaline), rechargeable (lead-acid, several lithium types, iron oxidation). Energy and power per mass and per volume of various battery types. Degradation with cycling, and temperature. Other storage mechanisms: pumped hydro, hot salt. Cost per joule and per watt.
Tuesday, Oct. 7
L7: The generation of fossil fuels: algae and plant growth, and the processes leading to the formation of coal, oil, and natural gas. Timescales of formation. Methods of extraction, costs, and the meaning of economically-recoverable reserves.
Thursday, Oct. 9
L8: Utilizing fossil fuels: internal combustion engines, turbine engines, heat-driven turbines. Thermodynamic efficiency and the temperature of burning. Comparing fossil fuel reserves and utilization rates, both in the USA and in the world.
Tuesday, Oct. 14 (zoom from London)
L9: Utilizing energy from the sun: direct solar conversion via photovoltaic panels, silicon and organic photovoltaics, energy and materials and cost of solar panel manufacture and installation. Lifetime of panels. Regional variations in insolation. Wind power (provided as an indirect effect of the sun's heating): costs for manufacture, installation, and disposal. Risks to birds, compared with other dangers birds face.
Thursday, Oct. 16
L10: Electrical transmission of energy: generators and motors, transformers, AC and DC. The energy and financial cost of transmission. National grids (common in many countries) versus regional grids (common in the USA), and permitting challenges for new power lines. Load leveling, and grid-scale energy storage.
Tuesday, Oct. 21
L11: Earth's thermal balance. The Planck blackbody radiation law, and radiation spectra of the sun and the earth. Svante Arrhenius and his 1896 estimate of temperature changes from CO2 concentration changes and their infrared absorption bands. Methane and water infrared absorption.
Thursday, Oct. 23
L12: Measuring mean earth temperatures. Temperature effects on oxygen isotope ratios, and temperature estimates from ice cores. Other proxies for temperature. The Pleistocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM). Complicating factors: clouds, albedo, heat absorption and transfer in the ocean. Large-scale climate models and their improvements with time; comparison with Arrhenius' simple estimate. Ice and sea level changes.
Tuesday, Oct. 28
L13: Carbon sinks and sources. Cosmic rays, carbon isotopes, and carbon dating. New and old carbon in the atmosphere as measured from isotope ratios; correlation with fossil fuel use. Effects of land utilization on carbon fluxes. Keeling's atmospheric CO2 measurements.
Thursday, Oct. 30
L14: Nuclear physics basics: protons and neutrons. The liquid drop model and the curve of binding energy. Radioactive decay: alpha, beta, and gamma. The discovery of nuclear fusion using accelerators, and neutron-induced nuclear fission in some heavy isotopes. The discovery of fission, its energy release, and the number of neutrons released per fission event. 235U, 238U, and 239Pu. Chain reactions: both slow, and fast.
Tuesday, Nov. 4
L15: The Manhattan project. Historical context, and early work in Germany and the UK. How a massive effort was launched in the USA. The Fermi's nuclear pile, uranium isotope separation (Oak Ridge), plutonium production (Hanford), working out the physics at Los Alamos. Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Fission bombs as triggers for fusion bombs; cold war production and weapons counts.
Thursday, Nov. 6
L16: The health effects of radiation. Quantifying dose and exposure. The early radiation environment of earth, and DNA repair mechanisms. The effects of high doses based on Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors. The challenges of linear extrapolation of high dose risks to low doses. Linear no-threshold risks: challenges in estimating individual and collective risks.
Tuesday, Nov. 11
L17: The development of nuclear reactors for power generation. Water and graphite moderators. Rickover, pressurized water reactors, and the nuclear navy. Boiling water reactors. Reactor control systems. Actinide population versus time. Thermal delay after a scram
Thursday, Nov. 13
L18: Famous accidents with early-generation nuclear reactor designs. SL-1 in Idaho, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. Modern operations knowledge, and comparison with the history of risk rates in aviation. Accident rates in fossil fuel production, and health effects of fossil fuel burning.
Tuesday, Nov. 18
L19: New developments in nuclear power: metal versus ceramic fuel. Fast neutron sodium-cooled reactors. Helium cooled graphite/uranium pellets. The thorium fuel cycle. The role of microreactors versus traditional gigawatt reactors.
Thursday, Nov. 20
L20: Nuclear power internationally. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the USA, and USA construction costs. France and its nuclear power fraction in total electrical energy generation. Modern commercial developments in Russia, South Korea, and China
Tuesday, Dec. 2
L21: Nuclear waste disposal. High-level waste: cooldown periods and transuranic mixes versus reactor type, and local storage at the nuclear power station. Nuclear waste reprocessing. Weapons material: the relative difficulties of using nuclear waste, versus centrifuges for uranium and reactors for plutonium production.
Thursday, Dec. 4
L22: Future energy mix scenarios with renewables, fossil fuels, and nuclear power: comparing the cases of Germany with high CO2 emissions, France, the USA, and South Korea
Class Attributes
Natural Sciences Foundational Discipline
Natural Sciences Distro Area