Beskjeder

I have just posted the final grades for this course. As you can see, the distribution is unusually good -- which also reflects the very high effort most of you spent. Well done! Let me know if you have any questions about these grades.

Also be reminded that there will be a final course evaluation meeting within a few days from now. So far only Morten has signed up, so please send me an email if you also want to participate (usually, there should be 2 students attending).

The announced compulsary problem set is out. Deadline is May 15, i.e. you have 9 full working working days to solve it... Feel free to collaborate and discuss solutions, but everyone should hand in individual solutions (email preferred). It's also ok to ask for (reasonable) tips on AstroDiscourse -- but there is of course no guarantee that I'll answer. :)

We have now graded the midterm exams. For each of you, the full results also include a breakdown of the points achieved per sub-problem (based on the detailed grading instructions).(*)

In setting the thresholds for the grade, I have taken into account that the exam was a bit on the long side. As a consequence, the overall result is really quite good for an advanced course like this one -- I definitely wouldn't have expected three A's out of only 11 exams -- so congrats to everyone! And thanks for the effort you put into this course, this makes it much more rewarding also from the teaching perspective!

(*) _{In this way, the point...}

So, one early morning slot less...

(I'm on a whole-day faculty meeting)

As anticipates, there just appeared further Thursdays where we have to do the lecture at 8 am. The remaining (too) early slots for this course are now:

• April 13
• April 20
• April 27
• May 4

Just to let you know that the date of the final exam is now fixed to Monday June 5. I have also updated the preliminary syllabus correspondingly.

I already mentioned this in the lecture, but here is a confirmation: for the exam, you can bring 3 A4 pages (two-sided) with own notes.

As explained, this is mostly meant to help you in preparing for the exam -- and to maybe help you remembering more basic things in case you get nervous; it's not a suggestion to prepare an as detailed list of formulas as possible (which would be rather meaningless). If you need more technical formulas, those are typically stated at the end of the exam...

Please remember to let me know if you prefer a tailored project over the default assignment before the end of the month! See the online forum for more details...

I just put out the first problem set and announced the first discussion session on Astro Discourse. Please make sure that you all join, since most of the (off-lecture) discussion will take place there! (I just noted that only a little more that half of you have tried to log in so far...)

In this course we will use AstroDiscourse for communicating outside of lecture / group exercise hours. So please take a look at a quick start guide if you haven't used this tool before.

In general, this kind of tool is really useful once one gets above a critical level of usage. So use it actively to ask and discuss any questions you may have!

You may have noticed that the standard lecture slots are on Monday and Thursday at 12:15 pm. On some weeks, however, we must use an early slot at 8:15 am on Thursday. For convenience I list here the dates where this applies:

• January 26
• February 9
• March 9
• March 30
• April 13
• May 4

Note that up to 2 additional early-bird dates may have to be added at a later stage...

A tentative plan for this first second course in quantum field theory (FYS5120) can now be found here, including reading suggestions. On the semester pages, you will always find up-to-date relevant information like problem sets, lecture times (inkl. potential changes and updates) etc.

Welcome, and looking forward to seeing you on Monday, January 23! 

Torsten Bringmann