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You will have the full 180 minutes to complete the exam.

The Exam will be a closed-book examination. Giving or receiving unauthorized help is a violation of the University's Rule 33 on academic integrity.

The Exam will consist of fifteen questions worth 20 points each, for a total of 300 points. Each question will have several parts.

The Exam will emphasize the subjects covered during the second half of the course but will include some questions on the subjects covered during the first half of the course.

The Exam will include questions on the assigned readings and on the news discussed at the beginning of classes (the latter is included in class slides).

The Final Exam will include some questions taken from the Midterm Exam, particularly questions that many students were unable to answer satisfactorily then.

All questions will require only short answers (a few words, a phrase or two, or one or two sentences).

Your answers will be graded on their completeness, correctness, and understandability, but not on their style or punctuation.

Copies of previous midterm and final exams (some with answers) are available via the Exams page, which is accessible from the Physics 280 home page. These are excellent study guides and studying them usually pays off handsomely. Be aware, however, that because of events that have occurred since these exams were given, the correct answers to some questions may have changed.

You will be asked to sketch the key components of either an A-bomb or an H-bomb, label the components, and describe their functions. For this purpose you should use the "Physics 280 designs" presented in the slides shown and discussed in class.

You may be asked about the implications of uranium or plutonium with different isotopic compositions. For this purpose use the IAEA categories discussed in class:

For uranium, these categories are low-enriched uranium (LEU) (less than 20% U-235), highly-enriched uranium (HEU) (greater than 20% U-235), and weapons-grade uranium (80% or greater U-235).

For plutonium, these categories are reactor-grade (less than 80% Pu-239, which is suitable for use in some reactors), fuel-grade (80%—93% Pu-239, which is suitable for use in other reactors) and weapons-grade (more than 93% Pu-239).