[en] A computational technique is introduced which allows the student and researcher an opportunity to observe the physical behavior of a class of many-body systems. A series of examples is offered which illustrates the diversity of problems that may be studied using particle simulation. These simulations were in fact assigned as homework in a course on computational physics

[en] The standard freshman kinetic theory of pressure would indicate the equation of state p = μ/n for incoherent radiation in an n-dimensional space. The validity of this can be demonstrated by two different methods: one using Maxwell's equations to show the vanishing of the averaged trace of the stress energy tensor, the other following a statistical mechanical derivation. One use of the result is in the study of cosmological solutions to Einstein's equations in n dimensions

[en] The distribution of classical kinetic energies has been calculated in the center-of-mass frame for one particle type among N particles emitted from a point with total kinetic energy E. The distribution goes over into the Maxwellian form when N is large. Applications to nuclear disintegration problems are briefly introduced

[en] The effect of the ''Klein paradox'' on the quarkonium energy levels is discussed

[en] The general solution of the massless Maxwell--Dirac equations in 1+1 dimensions, the classical version of the Schwinger model, is found. This solution serves as a good introduction in an intermediate course of mathematical physics to the study of concentrated propagating waves

[en] I derive the P--V relation of an initially cold gas during a one-dimensional nonadiabatic compression. Here P is the gas pressure on a moving piston and V is the gas volume

[en] The gauge presented here, which we call the Poincare gauge, is a generalization of the well-known expressions phi = -rxE₀ and A = 1/2 B₀ x r for the scalar and vector potentials which describe static, uniform electric and magnetic fields. This gauge provides a direct method for calculating a vector potential for any given static or dynamic magnetic field. After we establish the validity and generality of this gauge, we use it to produce a simple and unambiguous method of computing the flux linking an arbitrary knotted and twisted closed circuit. The magnetic flux linking the curve bounding a Moebius band is computed as a simple example. Arguments are then presented that physics students should have the opportunity of learning early in their curriculum modern geometric approaches to physics. (The language of exterior calculus may be as important to future physics as vector calculus was to the past.) Finally, an appendix illustrates how the Poincare gauge (and others) may be derived from Poincare's lemma relating exact and closed exterior differential forms

[en] An advanced undergraduate laboratory experiment is described in which a standard two-grid Franck--Hertz tube is used as a combined electron gun, drift space, and retarding potential analyzer. Electron energy spectra with a resolution better than 1 eV are obtained which show some of the energy-loss features characteristic of mercury vapor

[en] The exactly solvable Dirac electron in crossed, constant electric and magnetic fields represents the relativistic quantized Hall effect. The solution allows one to show that there are no relativistic quantum-mechanical corrections to the ordinary quantized Hall effect

[en] It has been shown that the kinematic relations between two iertial reference frames in relative motion can be made symmetric by an appropriate orientation of the coordinate axes of the two frames. It follows from this symmetry and the principle of relativity that the transformation matrix, A, from one frame to the other, and its inverse, A^-1, are equal. This result, along with a limiting-velocity postulate, was used in a derivation of the Lorentz transformation. The present note points out that only two transformation laws are compatible with the symmetry condition A = A^-1. One of these is the Lorentz transformation and the other violates causality. Thus, if the limiting-velocity postulate is replaced by the requirement that causality be satisfied in all inertial frames, one arrives at a derivation of the Lorentz transformation based entirely on concepts which were known and widely accepted long before the advent of special relativity: the homogeneity and isotropy of space in all inertial frames, the principle of relativity, and the principle of causality