Physics exam topics

The spherical pendulum and conservation laws in classical mechanics
The damped and driven harmonic oscillator
The small oscillations approximation and normal modes
The two-body problem
Relativistic effects in mechanics
Maxwell’s equation and their physical basis
Potentials and gauge invariance in electrodynamics
Motion of charged particles in electromagnetic fields
Electromagnetic waves in vacuum
Statistical origins of the laws of thermodynamics
Maxwell-Boltzmann, Bose-Einstein and Fermi-Dirac distributions
Statistical physics of ideal gases
Eigenstates of the Hamiltonian in Quantum Mechanics
The Schrödinger equation and the interpretation of the wave function
Observables in quantum mechanics and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle
Quantum description of the hydrogen atom
The quantum harmonic oscillator