DAMP Physics, IITB

Non-Core Session The session began with  Nitish Faterperkar , a 4 th  year undergraduate EP Dual degree student. He shared his work experiences while working on a social project in the rural village of Anandhwan, Maharashtra. Nitish has always been motivated to pursue social causes and has successfully explored, and continues to explore the world of social work that makes a difference in the lives of many. He describes this project as an effort to assess the impact of solar panels installed in the village. Solar panels, he describes, are an effective solution to the erratic electricity supply that this rural sector has observed in the past. Besides making the village self-sufficient in its energy demand, this project, helps to set up a precedent of affordable engineering solutions in a rural environment. Besides the aforementioned, his experience also pertained to improving computer literacy in the women of the village. He mentioned that this inclination of working i...

Instructor Name: Ganesh Ramakrishnan Course Type: Theory Pre-requisites: Formal : N/A ; Informal : Any rigorous statistics course Course Content: Regression, Neural Networks, Optimization techniques Other topics covered: The end of the course contains topics as per time available and student requests Books: Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning - Christopher M Bishop Lectures: No attendance policy, however it's better to go to class, because he does cover extra stuff Assignments: Around 2 coding assignments, Moodle quizzes Exams and Grading: 2 quizzes (~ 7.5% each), 1 midsem (~15%), 1 endsem (~25%), Project (~20%), Assignments (~20%), Moodle quizzes (~5%) Online material: A few of the instructor's recorded lecture videos Follow-up Courses : Advanced Machine learning, Intelligent learning agents Pro-tips: Personal Comments: Respondent: Mandar Sohoni

Instructor Name: Sharmistha Saha Course Type: Theory Pre-requisites: None Course Content: Different artistic movements in the modern era, including avant garde plays like Ubu Roi, naturalistic play Miss Julie, realism in theatre by Stanislavsky, symbolism by Rabindranath Tagore, political theatre of Erwin Piscator, theatre of the absurd (Samuel Beckett) and existentialism (Vijay Tendulkar). Other topics covered: Books: Lectures: Lectures, no attendance policy. Assignments: Presentation based on performances in a conference. Exams and Grading: Midsem 30%, presentation 10%, final project 60 % Online material: Follow-up Courses : Pro-tips: A really interesting course for anyone interested in a theoretical perspective of arts. Personal Comments: Respondent: Viraj Karambelkar

Instructor Name: P. R. Bhat/ Pravesh Jung Course Type: Theory Pre-requisites: None Course Content: Theory of origin of religion, Arguments for and against the existence of God, Problem of Evil, Religious language, Aristotelian, Platonic views on God, modern religious philosophies of Nietzsche, Durkheim, Bacon.  Other topics covered: Books: Lectures: Lectures by Pravesh Jung are really engaging, and require attendance. Assignments: Exams and Grading: 2 quizzes, midsem and endsem. Average difficulty. Online material: Follow-up Courses : Might get you interested in philosophy courses in the HS department, no direct follow up courses. Pro-tips: Personal Comments: Pravesh Jung is a really good teacher and doing this course was a great experience. Respondent: Viraj Karambelkar

Instructor Name: Madhav P. Desai Course Type: Theory Pre-requisites: Informal pre-requisite - EE112 Course Content: Boolean Algebra, CMOS logic gates, Minimization of Boolean formulas, Shannon's decomposition formula, Factorization, Arithmetic Logic Unit (Adder, Comparator, Shifter, Multiplier, Subtractor), Fast adder and multiplier, Sequential Circuits and Finite State Machines, D flip flop - construction and timing analysis, Register Transfer Level design, Testing and Verification of circuits Other topics covered: Turing machines and Random Access Memory, VHDL Basics  Books: Switching and Finite Automata Theory - Zvi Kohavi Lectures: Most lectures were taught on the blackboard. Manual attendance was taken in every class but no DX grade was given.  Assignments: No graded assignments were given. After every major topic, notes were given which had practice questions also (similar to questions asked in the exams). These notes were the major resourc...

Instructor Name: Anirban Sain Course Type: Theory Pre-requisites: Vector algebra and Matrix Algebra, Conic Sections, Integration and Differentiation  Course Content: Lagrange's Equation, Small Oscillations - finding frequency and normal modes of an oscillating system, Central Force and Kepler Problem, Rotation of rigid bodies, Canonical Transformations and Noether's Theorem Other topics covered: Liouville's Theorem Books: Analytical Mechanics - L. Hand and J. Finch  Classical Mechanics - H. Goldstein  Lectures: Attendance is taken in every class but DX grade is not awarded to anyone. All lectures are taught on the blackboard.  Assignments: Ungraded assignments were given after each major topic which were then discussed in class. The assignments consisted mainly of problems from either Hand and Finch or Goldstein. Exams and Grading: Quiz 1 - 10 marks, Midsem - 30 marks, Quiz 2 - 10 marks, Endsem - 50 marks   Pro-tips: 1. Do past quest...

Instructor Name: Raghunath Chellakot Course Type: Theory Pre-requisites: None Course Content: Postulates of Thermodynamics, Equilibrium, Maximum Work Theorem, Phase Transitions Other topics covered: Euler and Gibbs-Duhem Relations, Legendre Transforms Books: THERMODYNAMICS AND AN INTRODUCTION TO THERMOSTATISTICS- HB Callen Lectures: No attendance policy. Sir teaches using Blackboard. Lectures generally followed specific sections of the reference book. Sir ends up rushing through in the last part of the course and phase transitions are barely covered. Assignments: There were 3 ungraded tutorials of moderate level.  Exams and Grading: There is a quiz (15 marks) and Endsem (30 Marks). The Endsem had some tricky parts in the year 17-18 Online material: Follow-up Courses : Statistical Mechanics Pro-tips: DO Follow the latest edition of reference books. The earlier ones miss out some sections which are included in portion. Try to solve the exercis...

Instructor Name: Rekha Kulkarni Course Type: Theory Pre-requisites: None Course Content: Errors, Polynomial interpolation, Numerical intergration, numerical differentiation, Matrix and vector norms, Matrix decompositions, Initial value problem, eigenvalue problem,  Other topics covered: Books: Cante de Boor was the textbook, didn't use it myself though, slides were sufficient  Lectures: 80% attendance is necessary unless DX - this was the initial warning but didn't give any DXes. DXes were given in S2 division though by Shripad Garge Assignments: Tutorial booklet, mostly easy Exams and Grading: 2 quizzes 20%, midsem 30% and endsem 50%; quizzes were easy and objective; midsem and endsem papers were repeated I believe, the papers were okay and the grading was fair too. Online material: Follow-up Courses : Pro-tips:  Proxy attendance is liable to get you severely punished Personal Comments: Interesting course Respondent:...

Instructor Name: Anush Kapadia Course Type: Theory Pre-requisites: None Course Content: Primarily the ideologies of famous thinkers. Covered about 12-15 people. 1-2 slides per thinker. He announces who he is going cover along with a detailed course plan in his first lecture. Other topics covered: Books: Lecture material is sufficient to answer all questions asked in the exams Lectures: There was no attendance policy as such Assignments: Exams and Grading: 2 quizzes ~20% one midsem and one endsem. ~30% and ~40%. Exact weightage was not a round figure. All exams are multiple choice. Online material: Searching for reviews of the books/authors is very useful. Reading the actual manuscript is very difficult for someone not familiar with the subject. Follow-up Courses : Pro-tips: Listen to lectures(Very important if you plan on using slides). Quizzes are primarily based on slides. Lecture notes are useful for midsem/endsem. Personal Comments...

Instructor Name: Tara Shaw, Neha Gupta Course Type: Theory Pre-requisites: None C ourse Content: Microeconomics 1st half sem Macroeconomics 2nd half sem Other topics covered: First half  Chapters from Mankiw (3-8,13-16) Second half Chapters from Mankiw (23-30) Short run macro (Keynesian macro) from Fischer covered till IS-LM model Books: N. Gregory Mankiw- Principles of Economics Dornbusch & Fischer- Principles of Macroeconomics  Lectures: First half- Taught on the blackboard by Prof. Shaw. Very good lectures, he answered doubts very well. Used good examples. Insulted/Mocked people that came late but he taught well. Second half- Lectures were fast-paced, the teacher used slides and covered about 2 chapters of Mankiw in 3 hrs. The lectures sometimes contained extra information which wouldn't be covered in the books but the books on their own are quite good and are considered to be classics. Assignments: None Exams and Grading: 2 q...

Instructor Name: Suddho Mahapatra Course Type: Theory Pre-requisites: None Course Content: Drude model, Lattice structures, X-ray diffraction, Band structure, tight binding model for single and multiatom basis, Tightbinding model for graphene, density of states, cyclotron resonance. Other topics covered: Books: Solid State Physics by Ashcroft Mermin Lectures: Most of the lectures are on board, with some slides as an aid. Assignments: Regular Assignments and solutions are discussed. Difficulty level similar to that of the exams. Exams and Grading: 1 regular quiz, 1 take home quiz, midsem, open computer endsem. Online material: Material put up by instructor on moodle Follow-up Courses : Theoretical CMP Pro-tips: High chance of question paper repetition. Personal Comments: Respondent: Viraj Karambelkar