users.ox.ac.uk/~corp0014/B6-lectures.html gives a syllabus:
- Heat capacity in solids, localised harmonic oscillator models (Dulong-Petit law and Einstein model)
- Heat capacity in solids, a model of sound waves (Debye model)
- A gas of classical charged particles (Drude theory)
- A gas of charged fermions (Sommerfeld theory)
- Bonding
- Microscopic theory of vibrations: the 1D monatomic harmonic chain. Mike Glazer's Chainplot program.
- Microscopic theory of vibrations: the 1D diatomic harmonic chain
- Microscopic theory of electrons in solids: the 1D tight-binding chain
- Geometry of solids: crystal structure in real space. VESTA, 3D visualization program for structural models; an example crystal structure database.
- Geometry of solids: real space and reciprocal space. Reciprocal Space teaching and learning package.
- Reciprocal space and scattering. A fun way to discover the world of crystals and their symmetries through diffraction.
- Scattering experiments II
- Scattering experiments III
- Waves in reciprocal space
- Nearly-free electron model
- Band structure and optical properties
- Dynamics of electrons in bands
- Semiconductor devices. Intel's "A History of Innovation"; Moore's Law; From Sand to Circuits.
- Magnetic properties of atoms
- Collective magnetism. A micromagnetic simulation tool, The Object Oriented MicroMagnetic Framework (OOMMF); OOMMF movies of magnetic domains and domain reversal.
- Mean field theory
Problem set dated 2015: users.ox.ac.uk/~corp0014/B6-materials/B6_Problems.pdf Marked by: A. Ardavan and T. Hesjedal. Some more stuff under: users.ox.ac.uk/~corp0014/B6-materials/
The book is the fully commercial The Oxford Solid State Basics.
They intentionally projected the idea of a semi scary and cool secret society/cult/Fascist/Gestapo/non-racist Ku Klux Klan-like organization
Khômiss members would wear a face cover whenever they would go out "on duty", notably to break a student's door with a fire axe when some student had fucked up particularly bad.
The Khômiss had an ambivalent character: while on one hand they would punish students that they felt had fucked up, they were actually semi approved by the school's head.
And conversely, they could also play pranks on the school head, e.g. vandalizing their office with funny objects if they had made some decision that was particularly unpopular to the students. This also likely with tacit approval, and as a way to be a "cool independent organization that also represents the students".
As such, the Khômiss aimed to be a sort of a "conscience" of the cohort, punishing the evil deeds of either side.
They were apparently unfortunately disbanded by the school in 2013 it seems, just after Ciro Santilli left. They took some poor student out by car and left him more than 1km outsie of the school for some reason. But he had a cell phone and walked came back, so doesn't feel that serious. Likely the political correctness of the times just caught up with them.
Bibliography:
- fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditions_de_l%27École_polytechnique#La_Khômiss
- 2013 www.leparisien.fr/archives/la-mauvaise-blague-de-trop-a-polytechnique-02-07-2013-2945871.php news about the dissolution of the Khômiss.
- 2012 www.lajauneetlarouge.com/la-khomiss-deux-cents-ans-et-resolument-moderne/ A profile of the Khômiss by the student magazine "La Jeune et la Rouge"
Ciro Santilli approves of this one, related: Section "Free gifted education".
The downside of the Thiel Fellowship is that it is realistically impossible for its fellows to do anything in deep tech, only information science startups would be possible, as they would not have the labs, or lab skills required for any deep tech if they drop out before a PhD. Related: Section "The only reason for universities to exist should be the laboratories".
The only solution is the harder process of actually remodelling our very broken educational system.
There is just one key gotcha: the project has to be useful.
The Social Network: dinner with Sean Parker
. Source. Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project
Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
Intro to OurBigBook
. Source. We have two killer features:
- topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculusArticles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
- a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
- a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
Figure 1. Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page. View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivativeVideo 2. OurBigBook Web topics demo. Source. - local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
- to OurBigBook.com to get awesome multi-user features like topics and likes
- as HTML files to a static website, which you can host yourself for free on many external providers like GitHub Pages, and remain in full control
Figure 3. Visual Studio Code extension installation.
Figure 4. Visual Studio Code extension tree navigation.
Figure 5. Web editor. You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.Video 3. Edit locally and publish demo. Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.Video 4. OurBigBook Visual Studio Code extension editing and navigation demo. Source. 
- Infinitely deep tables of contents:
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact