The notes had a major update in 2020, after this they are meant not to change much for a few years. Translations of terminology provided to the local languages Finnish and Swedish are given in the notes. .
Prerequisite knowledge: Physics 1st year University level studies, thermodynamics, the structure of matter, basics of crystal structures and quantum mechanics.
Chapter 1: Introduction
If you notice serious errors in the lecture notes, pleaselet the lecturer know! The intent is to keep improving these notes with time.
1. Self-study and examination by any University of Helsinki student via the "examinarium" (formerly known as "tenttiakvaario") system of our university. This means that after you have studied all the material and believe you master it, you can go anytime during office hours to take a final exam in one of the "examiarium" rooms.
2. By taking the online MOOC version of course at mooc.helsinki.fi, and performing all the exercises there. After doing this, you can email the lecturer and ask for a grade to be entered. The grade will be based on the answers for the questions on all sections.
The time for taking the exam can be booked at: https://examinarium.helsinki.fi/enroll/MATR365/exam/335 .
Advice: first login with your university id, then select "Matemaattis-luonnontieteellinen tiedekunta" after which the course is visible. Then click "Valitse tämä tentti" and select a free time and place that suits you from the calendar provided.
The exam works as follows: after you enter the exam space and log in to the system, the computer will generate you automatically a set of questions, selected randomly from a large pool of questions prepared in advance. For this particular course, these contain 10 definitions selected from almost all terms given in bold font in the lecture notes (2 points each), 2 longer essay questions (6 points each) from sections 1-5 and 2 longer essay questions from sections 6-10. The answers are then typed on in a computer, which is not on the internet. The exam space is monitored via videocamera by the janitors. You are not allowed to take any assisting material to the exam space (and use of mobile phone is of course not allowed.
For now, the answers can be given in text only-format (i.e. equations and figures cannot be drawn), but the questions are made in such a way that it is possible to answer them without writing equations explicitly. Note that some of the questions do deal with describing the physics behind the equations given in the lecture notes, so you cannot ignore the equations.
The exam questions are in English, except for the definitions also the translation to Finnish and Swedish is provided whenever these were given in the lecture notes. You can answer the exam in English, Swedish, or Finnish.
After the exams, the responses are sent by email to the lecturer who will correct them in time (you are welcome to remind him if you do not hear from him within ~ 3 weeks or so).