Astronomy 294A: Black Holes
Spring 2008

• Instructor: David Weinberg, Professor of Astronomy.
• Textbook: Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy, by Kip Thorne.

• Course Syllabus
• Course Notes, most recently updated 5/16/08.
• Homework 1, Due 4/11
• Review guide for midterm 1.
• Calculus-based derivation of escape speed.
• Homework 2, Due 5/2
• Review guide for midterm 2.
• Extra credit assignment, due 5/28.
• Homework 3, Due 5/23

Other items handed out in class:

• Solutions to homework 1.
• Illustrations to accompany relativity notes.
• First few pages of Einstein's On The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies.
• First midterm.
• Solutions to first midterm (handed back with the midterms themselves).
• Solutions to second homework.
• Second midterm.
• Solutions to second midterm.

Video links:

• The Double Slit Experiment. Explanation of one of the strange consequences of particle-wave duality. It is described here for electrons, but the same would apply to photons.
• Relativity of simultaneity.
• Time dilation.
• Time dilation experiment. Follows a re-creation of the 1970 clocks-on-airplanes test of time dilation.
• Shoot-the-monkey illustration of the equivalence principle.
• Formation of neutron stars and black holes.
• Death by black hole.

Other links:

• Some nicely explained and illustrated notes on General Relativity. By Dwight Vincent, University of Winnipeg.