This is a description of the material from the book that is relevant to the final exam. For general comments, please see the previously posted page about the midterm review; since this is a comprehensive (cumulative) exam, additional comments may be needed and this page provides them. Note that this page only deals with the book material; more reviewing material is provided on the Materials page, and while some of it may be linked through this page, most of it is not.
Nothing new here; use the page for the midterm review. Please note that some of the material irrelevant at that time is at this point so basic – and has been covered extensively – that it is naturally included; this mostly refers to the Chapter 2.
Electromagnetism is a central topic for any discussion of physics; this is ‘core’ material, that we talked about a lot, and an account of the book treatment of it is given on the page on EM chapters.
This material is on relativity theories; it is a bit light on general relativity, both in space and treatment, while it goes into detail on special relativity. You do not need to know the details, but do need to appreciate and understand (to a reasonable extent) basic statements. These are deepest and most profound concepts, dealing with the very notions of space and time, and in ways that have almost nothing in common with our normal intuition. See the page on the relativity material in the book.
A very interesting chapter to read through. We have not talked about it at all, and none of it is of any relevance to the exam.
Quantum mechanics; the deepest humanity has gone so far in science, our current understanding of the physical reality. (Reality denied, in the form we usually assume for it.) Judged by the statements of the quantum theory, we have gone very far indeed, and cannot easily comprehend our results. Together with the general relativity, quantum theory presents our complete knowledge (and ignorance) of the world around us. There is a separate page on details of the book coverage of QM.
Radioactivity received very little coverage in the class, but much of the background material here, covered in the opening sections, has in fact been talked about (even if not in this context). The main theme of this chapter, radioactivity, is the sole subject of one of the labs. You certainly do need to have a basic acquaintance with some basic statements on radioactivity, generally at the level of the introductory portions of the manual write-up; you do not need to know details. This is covered in the first three sections of this chapter, and to a much greater detail than needed; please extract basic facts and principles. Do note that these scientific discoveries had resulted in the production of weapons that could, by their power and our nature, destroy us many times over. The rest of this chapter is a must-read at a multitude of levels. (But not for the exam.)
Certainly worth one's attention, directly following the discussions of the previous chapter; with what we have covered in the course, you should be able to read through most of it. But we have not talked about this material and it will not be in the exam.
Here the book arrives at one of its central motives, discussing energy resources and societal aspects of science and technology. Most definitely things that one would want to know about. We mentioned some (most basic) aspects of this issue, and one should be aware of them. We have not talked about the specific material presented in this Chapter, and this is not up for the exam.
We mentioned these things, but only to provide a hint of what modern theories deal with, and where our current understanding lies; it is a kind of material that cannot be a topic of questions for this exam. For those interested in high energy physics, quantum field theory and such, this will probably be very interesting.
The final word of this book; do read it.
Chapters 8–9 and 13–14 cover material that is critical for modern views, and that we talked about; see their pages linked above, but in short: one should understand most of it. (Again, this refers to basic understanding of the concepts and principles, not details.) The material of Chapters 10–11 received smaller coverage, time-wise; basic statements of the relativity theory are certainly needed, as covered in the class. As for the rest of the book, the only portion worth mentioning is radioactivity, covered in chapter 15 and a topic of your pre-last lab (and summarized in the lab manual); you need to know very basic facts and ideas. Please do not neglect the need for (very) elementary awareness of the issues of energy consumption and resources, as well as global warming. (As discussed in one of your labs – but with less detail.)