Symmetry and Spectroscopy

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Feedback 2014

Thank-you for filling out the questionnaires. It is a tremendous help to get specific and detailed feedback.

Your Feedback:

  • the overall consensus appears to be that the course is hard and challenging, but that it is a good course that is taught well and with entusiasm. Thank-you!
  • Have you found the website useful?
    • yes!
    • it is good that there is no wait time between lectures and access to the extra materials
    • you found it very helpful having the answers to the questions on the website, and having well worked solutions
    • you liked having everything nicely in one place, everything you needed, would have liked, was available
  • the easiest part of the course is the group theory, matrix mechanics, using the reduction formula and projection operator, and working out the molecular vibrations
  • the hardest part of the course is IR and Raman selection rules, transition dipole moment and perturbation theory
  • a group of people also found the mathematics and or quantum mechanics hard
  • the most interesting part of the course varied widely!
    • by far most people liked assigning a vibrational spectrum
    • predicting the vibrational motions using vectors, visualising the vibrations and looking at IR spectra in more depth
    • the link between symmetry and the vibrational spectrum
    • understanding where selection rules come from and where the peaks in the spectra peaks arise from
    • using diagrams and matrices to get the reducible representation, group theory and matrix manipulation

My comments and thoughts combined with your input:

  • people liked having the optional extras in the notes packet (which was new for this year!)
  • the "revision" notes within the notes packet seems to have been appreciated (which was new for this year!)
  • no comments on notation issues this year, so my efforts to clarify and define notation have been an improvement. (see last year's feedback)
  • this year I removed some material related to Raman spectra to make room to talk about electronic transitions, and for the first time I have some comments back that the Raman section was confusing, so next year I will put a bit of the removed material back into the notes, particularly that relating to polarised and depolarised modes. I also had one direct comment that more on the Raman spectra would be good.
  • last year I felt that the last lectures on selection rule/perturbation theory could be organised better ... this year I am much happier with this section
  • from your feedback I now need to work on making the notes and slides match!
  • Each year I like to invest time in improving the course and I would especially like to include more 3d animations and more examples of real spectra. Unfortunately there are time constraints in keeping the lecture course to eight lectures and in my time preparing material.
  • Feedback from last year was that it would be helpful if information about the mathematics to be used was conveyed to you before specific lectures, almost everyone liked this, and there was a balance of people wanting this information via e-mail or noted at the end of a lecture, so I will continue to do both! A number of people didn't do the revision and recognised it made things much harder.
  • I try to update the course each year
    • many of you recognised that L6 and L7 notes and slides did not match as well as the notes and slides for the other lectures, this I will fix for next year.
    • There was also a request to match the equations and figures in the slides with the labels or page numbers in the notes, so you know exactly where you are. I can do this!
  • As you know it is a balance between the time available and the very interesting and fascinating material I'd like to teach you. So if one part needs more time, another section has to be condensed.
    • many people thought the pace was good.
    • some thought the material in the first few lectures could be covered a bit more quickly
    • more people would have liked the last few lectures on the selection rules/perturbation theory to be covered a bit more slowly.
    • generally it was thought that going through the perturbation theory on the board was really helpful.
  • other suggestions for making the course more relevant or more exciting and enjoyable are below:
    • have an extra lecture to cover the mathematics
    • have more example spectra with annotations identifying the vibrational modes
    • revision/explanation of the quantum mechanics
    • slightly more pure group theory at the start
    • really enjoyable course with good examples and well worked solutions
    • derive the Einstein coefficients and create a better correlation with the photochemistry course that way
    • more problems to practice on!
    • more examples from the literature
    • some 3d models
    • the section where I outline the approach to solve problems are extremely helpful
    • move John deMello's second year course QM course to the summer term, then the background theory would be fresher for this course
    • teach this course earlier in the year so everyone knows the theory by the time they write the experiment 2S lab report

Feedback 2013

Your Feedback:

Thank-you for filling out the questionnaires. A summary of your feedback is:
  • many of you haven't used the web-site yet but you intend to and expect it will be useful, those who have found it to be very useful
  • the easiest part of the course is the group theory, matrix mechanics and molecular vibrations
  • the hardest part of the course is the selection rules and perturbation theory
  • the most interesting part of the course varied widely! However, assigning a vibrational spectrum ranked highly, others included learning how the computer calculates the vibrational modes, learning about group theory, learning about all the parts of the character tables, learning where things you've learnt before came from, the transition dipole moment and learning perturbation theory
  • most of you felt you had the math skills, many of you found yourselves a bit rusty, a few of you found the math challenging
  • the introduction and revision of previous lectures material could be covered more quickly
  • in general material did not need to be covered more slowly, but people did recognise the need to go over material again in their own time. Some people thought the last few lectures on the selection rules/perturbation theory could be covered a bit more slowly

Changes based on my thoughts combined with your input:

  • issue a "revision" sheet before the course starts covering matricies ...
  • quite a few comments came back in different answers relating to notation and symbols, new terms like "Hessian" and the formalisms used in the selection rule/perturbation theory part are troublesome ... so perhaps a revision sheet summarising these that can be refered to during lectures to aid in remembering what they all mean
  • speed up the introduction, symmetry operators and matrix mechanics part slightly and use the time gained to take slightly longer on the selection rules/perturpation theory parts
  • I felt that the last lectures on selection rule/perturbation theory could be organised a bit better ...
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