• The midterm (a 50-minute examination) will be given on Monday, March 10, from 10:10-11:00 a.m.
• The final (a three-hour examination) will be given Monday, May 19, from 8:00-11:00 a.m. in 4 Le Conte Hall.

If you take the regular exam option, the midterm counts for 2 parts in 10 (20%) of your course grade; the final, for 4 parts in 10 (40%). If you take the reading journal option, the final counts for 2 parts in 10 (20%); the reading journal, for 4 parts in 10 (40%).

Each exam covers all course material up through the lecture and reading assigments immediately preceding. The final exam is cumulative.

• Short-answer questions will typically come directly from the reading or from lecture (in the latter case, with a heavy emphasis on the list of names and terms). They will generally ask for a one-sentence identification of a person, organization, event, etc. Occasionally they will also an additional one-sentence comment on their place in the history of physics.
• Paragraph-answer questions require more in-depth discussion of developments or themes.  They should aim for coverage at the level of six to nine sentences. Answering them well involves a sense for big-picture issues as well as a command of important facts or examples.

• Who described the goal of physics as "to save the phenomena," and what did this mean?
• What is kinematics?
• What was the Tripos, and who were the wranglers?
• What is the mechanical equivalent of heat, and who measured it?

• Recount the fate of the mechanical philosophy from its origins to the turn of the 20th century. Begin by describing the mechanical philosophy that emerged from Newton's works (note the plural). Then trace the ramifications of the doctrine through the 18th and 19th centuries and describe its status (including that of the mechanical world picture) in 1900. 
• Why weren't x-rays discovered before they were? That is, what preconditions (experimental or theoretical) were needed before they could be found? The more details you can give, the better your answer will be.
• Explain the difference in levels of focus in thermodynamics on the one hand, statistical mechanics on the other: what different explanatory goals do these theories set for themselves? How is this difference significant for late 19th-century debates about the aim of science? You should lay out the issues in a general framework and then give one or two specific examples.
• What sort of creature was the theoretical physicist of the late 19th century? What were his origins and his duties? Why did he emerge?
• Many of the natural philosophers and physicists we have studied worked in several domains of physics at once (for instance, thermodynamics and electromagnetism). Pick out two figures and briefly explain (about 2 sentences each) what they contributed to their different fields. You need only give 2 domains per figure, though you may add more if you wish. What made their double mastery possible and productive? ("There was less to know back then" is not an adequate answer.)

• What is the exclusion principle, and who devised it?
• What did the MIT Rad Lab work on, and when?
• What was the Federation of Atomic Scientists, and when did it flourish?
• What did James Chadwick discover?
• For what did Richard Feynman receive his Nobel Prize?

• Describe the conflict between the two forms of quantum theory (Heisenberg's and Schrödinger's) in the mid-1920s. What were the factors that make the conflict between these two mathematical formalisms so sharp? How did the conflict finally get resolved?
• Outline the sources of funding for physics from the mid-19th century through the present. What institutions or bodies are interested in supporting physics, and why? Identify what you see as the major turning points in this development and explain their causes.
• Trace the history of the notion of the "field" from Faraday to the present. Don't forget the intermediate milestones of the late 19th and early 20th century. Is there an overall direction to this trend, or is it just a random walk? What would Faraday think about contemporary (QFT) notions of fields?
• Describe the rise of physics at Berkeley from the late 1920s into the early 1950s. Who are the dominant figures on this development? What kind of physics gets done here, and how is that important for the rest of the American physics community?
• Is the development of modern physics marked by revolutionary transitions or continuous development? Take two examples — one from before the midterm and one from after — and argue for your answer. Take into account both the impacts of the theories and the intentions of their creators.