Mizoram Civil Services Examination Syllabus
Optional Paper - Physics
PAPER – I
PART - A
Unit I : Mechanics of Particles
Mechanics of Particles: Laws of motion; conservation of energy and momentum, applications to rotating frames, centripetal and Coriolis accelerations; Motion under a central force; Conservation of angular momentum, Kepler’s laws; Fields and potentials; Gravitational field and potential due to spherical bodies, Gauss and Poisson equations, gravitational self-energy; Two-body problem; Reduced mass; Rutherford scattering; Centre of mass and laboratory reference frames.
Unit II : Mechanics of Rigid Bodies and of Continuous Media
Mechanics of Rigid Bodies: System of particles; Centre of mass, angular momentum, equations of motion; Conservation theorems for energy, momentum and angular momentum; Elastic and inelastic collisions; Rigid body; Degrees of freedom, Euler’s theorem, angular velocity, angular momentum, moments of inertia, theorems of parallel and perpendicular axes, equation of motion for rotation; Molecular rotations (as rigid bodies);
Di and tri-atomic molecules; Precessional motion; top, gyroscope. Mechanics of Continuous Media: Elasticity, Hooke’s law and elastic constants of isotropic solids and their inter-relation; Streamline (Laminar) flow, viscosity, Poiseuille’s equation, Bernoulli’s equation, Stokes’ law and applications.
Unit III: Special Relativity
Special Relativity: Michelson-Morley experiment and its implications; Lorentz transformations-length contraction, time dilation, addition of relativistic velocities, aberration and Doppler effect, mass-energy relation, simple applications to a decay process; Four dimensional momentum vector; Covariance of equations of physics.
Unit IV: Thermal and Statistical Physics
Thermodynamics: Laws of thermodynamics, reversible and irreversible processes, entropy; Isothermal, adiabatic, isobaric, isochoric processes and entropy changes; Otto and Diesel engines, Gibbs’ phase rule and chemical potential; van der Waals equation of state of a real gas, critical constants; Maxwell-Boltzman distribution of molecular velocities, transport phenomena, equipartition and virial theorems; Dulong-Petit, Einstein, and
Debye’s theories of specific heat of solids; Maxwell relations and applications; Clausius-Clapeyron equation; Adiabatic demagnetisation,
Joule-Kelvin effect and liquefaction of gases. Statistical Physics: Macro and micro states, statistical distributions, Maxwell-Boltzmann, Bose- Einstein and Fermi -Dirac distributions, applications to specific heat of gases and blackbody radiation; Concept of negative temperatures.
PART - B
Unit I: Waves, Geometrical Optics and Interference
Waves: Simple harmonic motion, damped oscillation, forced oscillation and resonance; Beats; Stationary waves in a string; Pulses and wave packets; Phase and group velocities; Reflection and Refraction from Huygens’ principle. Geometrical Optics: Laws of reflection and refraction from
Fermat’s principle; Matrix method thin lens formula, nodal planes, system of two thin lenses, chromatic and in paraxial optics-spherical aberrations.
Interference: Interference of light-Young’s experiment, Newton’s rings, interference by thin films, Michelson interferometer; Multiple beam interference and Fabry-Perot interferometer.
Unit II : Diffraction, Polarization and Modern Optics
Diffraction: Fraunhofer diffraction-single slit, double slit, diffraction grating, resolving power; by a circular aperture and the Airy pattern; Fresnel diffraction: half-period zones Diffraction and zone plates, circular aperture.
Polarization and Modern Optics: Production and detection of linearly and circularly polarized wave plate; Optical activity; Principles of fibre optics, attenuation; light; Double refraction, quarter
Pulse dispersion in step index and parabolic index fibres; Material dispersion, single mode fibres; Lasers-Einstein A and B coefficients; Ruby and He-Ne lasers; Characteristics of laser light-spatial and temporal coherence; Focusing of laser beams; Three-level scheme for laser operation; Holography and simple applications.
Unit III: Electrostatics, Magnetostatistics and Current Electricity
Electrostatics and Magnetostatistics: Laplace and Poisson equations in electrostatics and their applications; Energy of a system of charges, multipole expansion of scalar potential; Method of images and its applications; Potential and field due to a dipole, force and torque on a dipole in an external field; Dielectrics, polarization; Solutions to boundary-value problems-conducting and dielectric spheres in a uniform electric field;
Magnetic shell, uniformly magnetized sphere; Ferromagnetic materials, hysteresis, energy loss.
Current Electricity: Kirchhoff’s laws and their applications; Biot- Savart law,
Ampere’s law, Faraday’s law, Lenz’ law; Self-and mutual-inductances; Mean and r m s values in AC circuits; DC and AC circuits with R, L and C components; Series and parallel resonances; Quality factor; Principle of transformer.
Unit IV Electromagnetic Waves and Blackbody Radiation
Electromagnetic Waves and Blackbody Radiation : Displacement current and Maxwell’s equations; Wave equations in vacuum, Poynting theorem;
Vector and scalar potentials; Electromagnetic field tensor, covariance of Maxwell’s equations; Wave equations in isotropic dielectrics, reflection and refraction at the boundary of two dielectrics; Fresnel’s relations; Total internal reflection; Normal and anomalous dispersion; Rayleigh scattering;
Blackbody radiation and Planck’s radiation law, Stefan-Boltzmann law,
Wien’s displacement law and Rayleigh-Jeans’ law.
PAPER - II
PART - A
Unit I : Basic Quantum Mechanics:
Wave-particle dualitiy; Schroedinger equation and expectation values;
Uncertainty principle;
Solutions of the one-dimensional Schroedinger equation for a free particle (Gaussian wave- packet), particle in a box, particle in a finite well.
Unit II : Advance Quantum Mechanics:
Linear harmonic oscillator; Reflection and transmission by a step potential and by a rectangular barrier; Particle in a three dimensional box, density of states, free electron theory of metals;
Unit III : Angular momentum; Hydrogen atom; Spin half particles, properties of Pauli spin matrices. Atomic Physics
Stern-Gerlach experiment, electron spin, fine structure of hydrogen atom; L-S coupling, J-J coupling; Spectroscopic notation of atomic states; Zeeman effect; Frank-Condon principle and applications;
Unit IV : Molecular Physics
Elementary theory of rotational, vibrational and electronic spectra of diatomic molecules; Raman effect and molecular structure; Laser Raman spectroscopy; Importance of neutral hydrogen atom, molecular hydrogen and molecular hydrogen ion in astronomy; Fluorescence and
Phosphorescence; Elementary theory and applications of NMR and EPR;
Elementary ideas about Lamb shift and its significance.
PART - B
Unit I : Nuclear Physics:
Basic nuclear properties-size, binding energy, angular momentum, parity, magnetic moment;
Semi-empirical mass formula and applications, mass parabolas; Ground state of deuteron, magnetic moment and non-central forces; Meson theory of nuclear forces; Salient features of nuclear forces; Shell model of the nucleus - successes and limitations; Violation of parity in beta decay; Gamma decay and internal conversion; Elementary ideas about
Mossbauer spectroscopy; Q-value of nuclear reactions; Nuclear fission and fusion, energy production in stars; Nuclear reactors.
Unit II : Particle Physics:
Classification of elementary particles and their interactions; Conservation laws; Quark structure of hadrons; Field quanta of electroweak and strong interactions; Elementary ideas about unification of forces; Physics of neutrinos.
Unit III : Solid State Physics:
Crystalline and amorphous structure of matter; Different crystal systems, space groups; Methods of determination of crystal structure; Xray diffraction, scanning and transmission electron microscopies;
Band theory of solids - conductors, insulators and semiconductors; Thermal properties of solids, specific heat, Debye theory; Magnetism: dia, para and ferromagnetism;
Elements of superconductivity, Meissner effect, Josephson junctions and applications;
Unit IV: Elementary ideas about high temperature superconductivity.
Electronics:
Intrinsic and extrinsic semiconductors; p-n-p and n-p-n transistors;
Amplifiers and oscillators;
Op-amps; FET, JFET and MOSFET; Digital electronics-Boolean identities, De Morgan’s laws, logic gates and truth tables; Simple logic circuits; Thermistors, solar cells; Fundamentals of microprocessors and digital computers.
