Syllabus

Please take a moment to review this syllabus. It contains important information about due dates, grading, and academic honesty guidelines.

Chapters

This course is centered around a set of twenty chapters, listed below (and in the course outline). As you progress you will learn more and more about the Quantum World.

We recommend following the lectures in order from top to bottom. If you already have experience in this field you may skip forward some, but note that every section includes material that counts for your grade.

Grading

You will be graded on your performance on the questions in this course. These questions are spread throughout the course; there are no exams or quizzes.

Each problem - that is, each time you see the "Submit" box - is worth a number of points as indicated. You can see your current grade on your Progress page.

Some problems are designed to raise questions in your mind and get you curious about the course material. You should attempt to answer these questions correctly, but they are worth very few points (one or two each), so don't worry too much about them. You can still get an excellent score in the course even if you answer them all wrong.

Other questions are designed to test your understanding of the material in the course. These will be worth more: 10 to 20 points each depending on their difficulty and the length of time it should take to complete them. You will need to complete most of these correctly in order to do well in the course.

Due Dates

This course has only one due date: the end of the course. All material must be complete before the final day. Because the course is very long, you will see a set of suggested due dates on the course calendar, but these do not impact your grade.

Certification

The passing grade for this course is 60%. You can find your current score on the Progress page. All subsections count equally for grading; the lowest score will be dropped. There is no final exam.

EdX provides certificates to those who have passed the course and verified their identity. If you achieve a passing grade in this course you are eligible for a Verified Certificate. Your certificate will indicate you have successfully completed the course, but will not include a specific grade.

To learn more about self-paced courses, see the edX learner's guide, and especially the part about receiving certificates in self-paced courses. This course does not offer college credit and is not counted towards admissions at Harvard.

Guidelines for Collaboration

We encourage class participants to share their approach to problems! Such discussions can be useful for your classmates, and it's always useful to see more than one way to do a problem. All that we ask is that you please do not post solutions. The staff will be proactive in removing posts and replies in the discussion forum that have stepped over the line.

It is ok to discuss the general approach to solving a problem.
You can work jointly to come up with the overall approach or general steps for a solution.
It is ok to get a hint, or several hints for that matter, if you get stuck while solving a problem.
It is ok to have someone show you a few steps of a solution where you have been stuck for a while, provided of course, you have attempted to solve it yourself without success.
You should work out the details of the solution yourself.
It is not ok to take someone else's solution and simply copy the answers from their solution into your checkboxes.
It is not ok to take someone else's formula and plug in your own numbers to get the answer.
It is not ok to post answers to a problem.
It is not ok to look at a full step-by-step solution to a problem.

After you have collaborated with others in generating a correct solution, a good test to see if you were engaged in acceptable collaboration is to make sure that you are able to do the problem on your own.

It is ok to use computer algebra systems. If you have access to Mathematica, Maple, MATLAB, or similar systems, it is ok to use them to perform integrals, derivatives, matrix operations, and more. (Free alternatives include Wolfram Alpha, Mathics, SageMath, r, and Octave.) The point of this course is not to crank through calculations, but to understand how they are set up and what the results mean. There are times when we will recommend that you do an integral or take a determinant by hand, but those are relatively rare.

Discussion Forum Guidelines

The discussion forum is the main way for you to communicate with the course team and other students. We hope it contributes to a sense of community and serves as a useful resource for your learning. Here are some guidelines to observe on the forums.

Search Before Asking: The forum will be hard to use if there are multiple threads on the same issue. The best discussions happen when several people participate in a single thread. Before asking a question, use the search feature to see if someone else has already created this thread..
Descriptive Titles: Try to compose a title which is descriptive and provide as much information as possible without being overly long: In your title, specify the problem or video and, in a few words, what your issue is. In the question text, describe what aspect you do not understand and what you have already tried doing.
Organize your Discussions: When creating a post, be sure to choose a category (such as General, Tech Issues, or Python Help). If you have a question about a particular page or problem, include a link to that page.
Write Clearly: We know that English is a second language for many of you but correct grammar will help others to respond. Avoid ALL CAPS, abbrv of wrds (abbreviating words), and excessive punctuation!!!!
Use $ \LaTeX $: You can create mathematical expressions in the forums by encasing LaTeX code in dollar signs, like this: $ ( n + \frac{1}{2} ) \hbar \omega $ will create the expression $ ( n + \frac{1}{2} ) \hbar \omega $.
Encourage useful posts: This applies to both questions and responses. Click on the green plus button at the top right of the box for either a post or a response. In this way, useful posts can be found more easily.
Be polite: We have learners from all around the world and with different backgrounds. Something that is easy for you may be challenging for someone else. Let's build an encouraging community.

Contacting Course Staff

Course staff can be contacted on the discussion boards, by creating a new post with the word [STAFF] in the title. Issues will generally be addressed within 72 hours. Please use this for technical matters only, not for questions about the course's science content.

Research

By registering as an online learner in our open online courses, you are also participating in research intended to enhance HarvardX's instructional offerings as well as the quality of learning and related sciences worldwide. In the interest of research, you may be exposed to some variations in the course materials. HarvardX does not use learner data for any purpose beyond the University's stated missions of education and research. For purposes of research, we may share information we collect from online learning activities, including Personally Identifiable Information, with researchers beyond Harvard. However, your Personally Identifiable Information will only be shared as permitted by applicable law, will be limited to what is necessary to perform the research, and will be subject to an agreement to protect the data. We may also share with the public or third parties aggregated information that does not personally identify you. Similarly, any research findings will be reported at the aggregate level and will not expose your personal identity.

Find out more about our research at the HarvardX Research center!

HarvardX: Chem160 The Quantum World