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Course Information

Introduction

The physical understanding of electricity and magnetism is much more recent than the understanding of classical mechanics. Some electric and magnetic phenomena have been observed since ancient times, though little progress was made in understanding them until the eighteenth century. Much of the modern world depends on electromagnetism, the foundation of which has been understood since Maxwell’s time. Even though this foundation is well established, electromagnetism is still the basis of much physics research today.

From the standpoint of your physics education, this is also an important class. This class will be even more mathematically intensive than Physical Mechanics, largely due to the intrinsically three-dimensional nature of the magnetic field and force. This leads to the necessity to use vector calculus more than we have before.

In a sense, this course consists of a retelling of the physics that you learned in Physics 200. You now have a stronger mathematical background, as well as a stronger understanding of classical mechanics, so we can go back over the material in more detail and cover topics that were not within your reach before.

Homework

Homework will be assigned for this class and will most often be due every other class day. Make sure that you take the homework seriously since working through these problems is where much of the learning in this class will take place. Note that solutions to the problems in this textbook are available at a variety of places online. For that reasons, I will be using some problems from the book and some from elsewhere.

Quizzes

Quizzes will be given in class frequently. Most will be very short problems which will just be graded on whether or not a serious attempt was made to complete the problem. Other quizzes will be like homework problems and will be graded normally.

Tests

You can bring a single-sided (double-sided for the final), 8.5 x 11 inch sized cheat sheet to each test that has relevant formulas and constants on it. No worked out problems or examples allowed on the equations sheet. Tests will consist of several problems.

Grading

The grades in this class will be based on 6 scores: quiz, homework score, 3 test scores, and the final exam score. Quizzes will be worth 10 %, while the homework and tests will be worth 15 % each and the final will be worth 30 %.

Course Schedule

In this class, we will cover at least the first seven chapters of the textbook. If time permits we will also cover some of chapter 8, 9, and 12. A tentative test schedule is shown below:

References

• Classical Electromagnetism by Robert Good – covers Maxwell’s equations early.
• Foundations of Electromagnetic Theory by Reitz, Milford and Christy – drier treatment at about the same level as Griffiths.
• Classical Electrodynamics by Jackson – the standard graduate level E&M text.