Teaching and Pedagogy

This page will include course material and details of my teaching activities at IITM. I teach undergraduate as well as post-graduate (M.Sc.) courses. Even though we have an active Ph.D. programme, we do not have too many courses for our doctoral students.

All pages tagged teaching: This link will let you access various online notes that I have created for various courses over the year.

Fall 2022

PH5030 Classical Mechanics

Spring 2022

PH5080 Statistical Physics II and PH1030 Undergraduate Laboratory

Fall 2021

PH5030 Classical Mechanics

Fall 2020

PH5030 Classical Mechanics

Spring 2020

PH1020 Physics II — In addition to teaching, I coordinated the course with my colleague, Dr. Sunethra Ramanan.

2000-2019

• Fall 1995 Mathematical Physics (Shared with V Sankaranarayanan) This is the first course that I taught!
• Spring 1996 PH102 Physics II (it was coordinated by the professor who taught me this course as an undergraduate!) and two sessions of PH104 Undergraduate Physics Laboratory
• Fall 1996 PH210 Physics III and ???
• Spring and Fall 1997 Spent a year at U. of Bonn.
• 1998-1999 will be available some day!
• Spring 2000 Quantum Mechanics I and Electronics Laboratory.
• Fall 2000 Quantum Mechanics II and Electronics Laboratory.
• Spring 2001 Classical Field Theory and Undergraduate Laboratory.
• Fall 2001 Classical Field Theory and Undergraduate Laboratory.
• Spring 2002 Physics II (PH102) and Undergraduate Laboratory.
• Fall 2002 Physics I (PH101)[coordinator] and Undergraduate Laboratory.
• Spring 2003 Physics II (PH102) and Undergraduate Laboratory.
• Fall 2003 Physics III (PH201) and Classical Field Theory
• Spring 2004 Principles of Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Field Theory
• Fall 2004 Physics III (PH201)[coordinator] and Undergraduate Laboratory
• Spring 2005 Statistical Physics (PH508) and Classical Field Theory (PH546) and Undergraduate Laboratory[Coordinator]
• Summer 2005 Physics II (PH102)
• Fall 2005 and Spring 2006 On sabbatical leave
• Fall 2006 Classical Field Theory (PH546) and Quantum Mechanics II (shared with Arul Lakshminarayan)
• Spring 2007 Principles of Mathematical Physics (EP211); Physics II (PH102) tutorial and undergraduate lab(one session).
• Fall 2007 Principles of Classical Dynamics (EP201), Introduction to Mathematical Physics (PH501)[shared with Prasanta Tripathy] and Physics I (PH101) tutorial.
• Spring 2008 EP211 Introduction to Mathematical Physics, PH102 Tutorials, and Computational Physics Lab
• Fall 2008 PH546 Classical Field Theory and PH103 Undergraduate Physics Lab
• Spring 2009 PH587 General Relativity and Cosmology
• Fall 2009 PH350 Classical Physics PH708 Foundations in Theoretical Physics (Classical Mechanics and Statistical Mechanics) Lectures on Quantum Field Theory at the Preparatory SERC school in Theoretical High Energy Physics during October 4-16 2009.
• Spring 2010 PH3520 Quantum Physics
• Fall 2010 PH5460 Classical Field Theory and PH7080 Foundations in Theoretical Physics (Classical Mechanics and Statistical Mechanics)
• Spring 2011 PH3520 Quantum Physics and PH1040 Undergraduate Physics Lab (2 sessions)
• Fall 2011 PH5100Quantum Mechanics I and Undergraduate Physics Lab (1 session)
• Spring 2012 PH5170 Quantum Mechanics II and Undergraduate Physics Lab (2 sessions)
• Fall 2012 PH5460 Classical Field Theory and PH7080 Foundations in Theoretical Physics (Classical Mechanics and Statistical Mechanics)
• Spring 2013 PH5480 Quantum Field Theory and PH2060 Contemporary Physics I am teaching this course jointly with my colleague Prof. S. Lakshmibala.
• Fall 2013 PH7080 Foundations in Theoretical Physics (Classical Mechanics Module) and a contact course on Advanced Quantum Field Theory.
• Spring 2014 I taught (the easy part!) one section of the first-year undergraduate course PH1020 (Physics II) in addition to coordinating (the hard part) it with my colleague, Dr. Nirmala.
• Fall 2014 PH5460 Classical Field Theory PH5211 High Energy Physics This course is shared equally with my colleague, Professor. Lakshmi Bala
• Spring 2015 PH5480 Quantum Field Theory and PH2060 Contemporary Physics This course is shared equally with my colleagues, Prabha Mandyam and Jim Libby.
• Fall 2015 PH5100 Quantum Mechanics I and PH4030 Conceptual Framework of Physics Both courses are shared with my colleague, Prof. Lakshmi Bala.
• Spring 2016 PH5020 Electromagnetic Theory and PH5081 Nonequilibrium Statistical Mechanics
• Fall 2016 PH1080 Thermodynamics and Kinetic Theory and PH1030 Undergraduate Physics Laboratory
• Spring 2017 PH5020 Electromagnetic Theory
• Fall 2017 PH1080 Thermodynamics and Kinetic Theory and PH1030 Undergraduate Physics Laboratory
• Spring 2018 PH5020 Electromagnetic Theory
• Fall 2018 Off from Teaching
• Spring 2019 PH3520 Quantum Physics and EP/DD Laboratory
• Fall 2019 PH5100 Quantum Mechanics I

NPTEL Lectures

I gave a set of 39 lectures on Classical Field Theory in 2010 as a part of the Phase II of the NPTEL project that was funded by a generous grant from the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India.

Lectures on my YouTube Channel

1. A short introduction to the postulates of quantum mechanics which was aimed at first-year undergraduate students at IIT Madras. These lectures were given during the early days of the pandemic (April-May 2020).
2. Lectures on Classical Mechanics from a course I gave during July-November 2021.
3. Lectures on Statistical Mechanics from a course I gave during January-May 2022.

Books (or Promises that I don't keep)

1. Classical Field Theory — a first course (under preparation) — This book is to appear in the series Texts and Readings in Physical Sciences by the Hindustan Book Agency. It is aimed at M.Sc. students in Physics (in the British/Indian system), Physics majors (in the American system) and Diploma students (in the German system). I hope to bring out the book towards the end of 2008. Here is a link to the pdf file of the proposed table of contents — comments and suggestions are most welcome.
2. I am also writing a three-volume series on Physics with Prof. V. Balakrishnan and Prof. S. Lakshmibala. The material is based on lectures given at IITM over the years to undergraduates during their first three semesters. No publisher has been identified and we don't have a date for completion! The table of contents will appear soon.