Pointers

• course grades
• Physics Department home page
• Course materials, such as problem sets, handouts and corrections, from me.
• Information from the Teaching Assistants:, such as solutions.

Administration

• FINAL EXAM: Wednesday, March 18 - 8:00-10:00 a.m. - KPTC 103
• Instructor: Tom Witten, Research Institutes L104, t-witten@uchicago.edu
• Teaching Assistants:
  Ted Quinn t-quinn@uchicago.edu Jordan Koss j-koss@uchicago.edu
• Class meets:
  Monday, Wednesday, Friday from 9:30 to 10:20 in Kersten 103
  discussion section with TA's Friday, 1:30??
  lab, every other week, Tuesday or Wednesday
• Aim of the course: To bring your knowledge of electricity, magnetism and relativity up to the level of a bachelor's degree in physics
• Prerequisites: Physics 225
• Coursework:
  • Homework
    A problem set will be assigned each week, to be turned in the following week at the beginning of class. The problems are the main learning activity of the course. Don't hesitate to consult me about problems; it is inevitable that I will assign some that are confusingly worded or ill-posed. I encourage collaboration on problems. But you should report your solution independently.
  • Labs
    You will perform about 4 afternoon laboratories throughout the term in separately-scheduled laboratory sections.
  • Late policy for homework and labs.
  • Midterm
    A midterm exam will be given in class on Friday, February 6, covering the the work up to that point.
  • Final exam
    Probably a two-hour final at the scheduled time.
  • Grading weights
    The homework counts the most, the final and labs slightly less, and the midterm least. You may wish to look at last year's grades
• Textbooks:

  Main text

  David J. Griffiths Introduction to electrodynamics, 2nd edition.   Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice-Hall, c1989

  Supplementary texts

  • Roald K. Wangsness, Electromagnetic fields, 2nd edition.   New York : Wiley, c1986. offers more detailed derivations and works out more cases
  • Paul Lorrain, Dale R. Corson Electromagnetism : principles and applications.   San Francisco : W. H. Freeman c1979 or later.
  • Edward M. Purcell Electricity and magnetism 2nd edition or later.   New York : McGraw-Hill, c1985 or later.
    a more elementary text
  • Jackson, John David Classical electrodynamics, 2nd edition.   New York, Wiley c1975
    a graduate text
• Office hours: I plan to be available immediately after each class for questions on the material. Other times are available by appointment.
• Bulletin board: The page you are reading is a copy of the web page for the course. Its address is listed at the top. You can also get to this page via the physics department web page, under my name. Announcements of revisions in problems, schedule changes, etc. will be posted here.

Plan of course

Magnetism (conclusion) --7 lectures

• Magnetic materials 6
  • the force on a current loop: magnetic dipole
  • the field of a magnetic dipole
  • magnetic dipoles in matter
  • The auxiliary field H
  • Linear, isotropic, homogeneous materials
  • Ferromagnetism
• Magnetic energy

Intermediate special relativity, 10---11 lectures

• Wave solutions of Maxwell's equations: motivation for a frame-invariant speed
• Length preserving transformations: Generators of transformation group
• The Lorentz length and why it is invariant in moving reference frames
• The generators of the Lorentz transformations
• Connection to last quarter's notation for Lorentz transformations.
• Relativistic modification of Newton's laws of motion: relativistic generalization of velocity
• Collisions: Relativistic generalization of momentum.
• Transformation of space and time derivitives: covariance and contravariance.
• Spacetime description of electric and magnetic fields, Maxwell's equations.
• The electromagnetic stress tensor and its interpretation

Electromagnetic waves: 8---7 lectures

• The E and B fields in a plane wave: polarization, energy, momentum
• Waves in a conducting medium, waves in a plasma
• Passage through a dielectric interface: kinematics
• Passage through a dielectric inteface: dynamics.
• Passage into a conducting medium.
• (Diffraction)
• Waveguides; transmission lines

Electromagnetic radiation 9---4 lectures

• Radiation from a localized current source: near and far field regimes
• Radiation from accelerating charges

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Tom Witten, t-witten@uchicago.edu