Solid State Physics
Interactive Notes
Preface
This is a didactic experiment on the creation of interactive notes for the Solid State Physics course in the Master’s Degree in Physics, leveraging on the publishing framework Quarto.
Misuse of interactive tools. Interactive figures hopefully help a faster grasp of concepts (especially in a course like Solid State Physics, where geometric complexity often shadows conceptual issues). Still, a student should never underestimate the value of sketching geometries and derivations by hand. It is thus strongly advised to regularly set aside the digital tools, take a piece of paper, and attempt to manually reconstruct the visualizations and spatial concepts presented here.
Optional sections. The notes contain more than really requested for the final exam. Sections tagged with the icon contain optional material, meaning they cover topics, discussions or concepts that, while interesting in my view, fall outside the syllabus of the course. As such, they can be basically skipped in view of the exam. Some of them are marked as Test your understanding: you are encouraged to use them to self-assess your understanding of the core material.
Use of AI tools. The creation of these notes was supported by AI tools in the following ways: (1) translation to javascript of pre-existing jupyter notebook for the visualization of solid states concepts; (2) refining of new figures, in particular from the user interaction point of view; (3) general management of the Quarto project. Figures are based on javascript: they are fundamentally not intended for direct consultation, nevertheless they were designed to be relatively easy to understand and organized so that physics-related code and constants are confined in specific sections of the code.
This document is an experimental text and a translation of solid state physics lecture notes into the Quarto interactive book format. It is still a work in progress, not a definitive or polished publication, and is not yet intended for official public distribution.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
© 2025–2026 Stefano Roddaro · University of Pisa