Natural Sciences Tripos Part 1 Mathematics
Mathematical Methods for Physics and Engineering is an indispensible handbook for the second year maths course. It may be worth purchasing a copy, but if not, your library should have it. The solutions manual is also useful, given a lot of the problems are similar to your question sheets.
Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences by Mary Boas is also a fine reference, highly recommended by the Mathematics department for their corresponding courses.
Practicalities
Supervisions will be weekly in 31C Churchill. Please hand in work by 5:00 pm the day before your supervision (or by noon if you're handing in on Sunday) to my pigeon hole in the Porters' Lodge.
Work
On the front page of your work, please summarise any issues you had with the problems or questions you have from the lectures. It's much more efficient if I know what we need to go over in advance.
This is only a rough guide; it might have to change depending on the pace of supervisions. Once we've got going, I suggest we cover a Tripos question each week as well.
1A NST mathematics
| Supervision | Work |
|---|---|
| Michaelmas 1 | Sheet 1: A3–8, B3–10 |
| Michaelmas 2 | Sheet 1: B11–13, C2–12 |
| Michaelmas 3 | Sheet 1: D, E, F1, F5–10 |
| Michaelmas 4 | Sheet 1: F11–19, G, H3–5 |
| Michaelmas 5 | Sheet 1: I, J, K, L, M |
| Michaelmas 6 | Sheet 1: N, O & Sheet 2: P |
| Michaelmas 7 | Sheet 2: Q, R1–8 |
| Lent 1 | Sheet 2: R9–15 and Tripos questions |
| Lent 2 | Sheet 1: S3, S5–9 |
| Lent 3 | Sheet 1: 10–13 Tripos: 2002 P2 4B, 7D |
| Lent 4 | Sheet 2: 4–10 Tripos: 2001 P1 5C, 12F |
| Lent 5 | Sheet 2: 11–18 Tripos: 2002 P2 3B, 11F |
| Lent 6 | Sheet 2: 19–24 Tripos: 2003 P1 3B, 11F |
| Lent 7 | Sheet 3: 6–12 Tripos: 2005 P1 3B, 4B |
| Lent 8 | Sheet 3: 13–20 Tripos: 2006 P1 4B, 8D |
1B NST mathematics
| Supervision | Work |
|---|---|
| Michaelmas 1 | Sheet 0 |
| Michaelmas 2 | Fourier transforms
Sheet 1: 1–7 2014 P1 4C |
| Michaelmas 3 |
Coordinate systems
Sheet 1: 8–Sheet 2: 2 Tripos TBD |
| Michaelmas 4 |
Delta functions and Greens' functions
Sheet 2: 3–8 Tripos TBD |
| Michaelmas 5 |
Separation of variables and linear algebra
Sheet 2: 9–Sheet 3 4 Tripos TBD |
| Michaelmas 6 |
Linear algebra
Finish Sheet 3 Tripos TBD |
| Michaelmas 7 |
Complex analysis
Sheet 4 Tripos TBD |
The “basic skills” questions are optional (unless mentioned); do them if you're unsure of the topic, or find the main questions too challenging to start off with.