Physics 341-01 Electricity & Magnetism Fall 2017
MWF 1:35PM – 2:40PM
Room OWS 250
Instructor:Dr. Richard A. Thomas
Office: OWS Room 162
Phone: 962-5212
Email:
Office Hours: My scheduled office hours Tuesdays from 11:30 to 12:30 and Mondays from 10:00 to 11:00am. You will find me in my office at those times. Please feel free to stop by my office any time, however, or make an appointment. Keep in mind I will not always be in on Thursdays.
Texts:Introduction to Electrodynamics (4th Edition), David J. Griffiths (REQUIRED)
A Student’s Guide to Maxwell’s Equations, Daniel Fleisch (REQUIRED)
Div Grad Curl and All That (4th Edition), H. M. Schey (SUPPLEMENTAL)
Tests (80%): There will be four exams during the semester (including the final). You must take all of the exams, but your lowest score will be weighted only half as much as your other scores. Consider each exam to be cumulative, because newer material builds on material covered previously. The 4th test will definitely be more cumulative than the other three, but will not be weighted more than the other three. Tests must be taken at the scheduled time. Requests to reschedule or make up exams or labs for non-emergency personal reasons will be declined. Do not make advance travel commitments with the expectation that such requests will be granted. Permission to take an exam EARLIER than the scheduled time to accommodate college activities can usually be arranged if you make the request at least 1 week in advance.
NOTE—The following rules will apply to tests:
- No graphing calculators or any calculator with memory will be allowed.
- You will be supplied with a list of formulas. This and a calculator are the only external tools you will have available to you for the test.
- I will be in the classroom for all tests.
If you have documented disabilities and/or need specific classroom accommodations, please let me know as early as possible. I will be happy to see that your needs are met.
Academic Support Center – Providing counseling in study skills, English as a second language support, and tutoring:
Homework (20%): Homework assignments will be given at the beginning of nearly every class period. Doing the homework is crucial to learning the material. I encourage you to ask many questions about homework – both to me and to your classmates – and I encourage you to work in groups. Solutions will be posted on the course web site after they are due. Homework assignments are due two class periods after they are assigned. These will be graded purely on effort. In order to insure you get credit, turn in ALL of your work on a problem even if you don’t get the answer. If you turn in no work on a particular problem, you will get a zero for it. Assignments turned in up to one class period late can get no better than ½ credit.
Course Web site:
This contains our syllabus, a list of topics covered in class, homework solutions (posted after it is due), future homework assignments, and course schedule. Please bookmark this and check it often, as I will put class announcements there as well.
Honor Code: In the process of conducting scientific work it is essential that an attitude of trust and honesty is common to all participants. In the Physics Department we have an honor code. This means that we trust you. For example, you are free to leave the room during exams without asking me first. We take our honor code very seriously, so a breach of this trust has severe consequences. Cheating–in any form–will be dealt with according to the University’s Academic Integrity Policy. More significantly, cheating would damage the trust I have in you. Don’t jeopardize this trust. Keep in mind that I respect you as individuals, and I respect the effort you put into the class–regardless of your grade.
Approximate Grading Guidelines: Technically, I do not have a fixed grading scale. At the end of the semester, I list everyone’s course score out of 100 from top to bottom and draw the A/A-, A-/B+, B+/B, etc., lines in big gaps between adjacent scores. This way, there are no borderline cases. I never put the border between an A- and a B+ higher than 90%, and so far I have never found it necessary to put it any lower than 87.5%. So if you want to assure yourself of at least an A-, aim for a course total above 90%. On the other end of things, I have never given a passing grade for a course point total less than 50% of the maximum. Midterm grades, however, are assigned according to a strict 90-100 = A, 80-90 = B, 70-80 = C, etc., scale. With each test you get back, you will be given two scores: one for that test, and one that indicates your current course score out of 100.
Study Habits: Your life will be easier if you study every day.
1)Spend 15 minutes after each lecture to review the lecture material while it is still fresh.
2)Read the specified sections of the text (approximately 12-15 pages of material each class period). Write down questions that occur to you as you read, work through the examples in the text, and jot down notes to remind you of any insights you gain by combining the lecture and text material.
3)Work on the HW problems every day. Work on them in groups, but don’t let all the others in the group do all the work. They will learn the material but you won’t!
This will take about an hour per day every day. This type of study pattern will help you learn the material and save you much wear and tear before exams. If you’re spending less than 6 hours per week with the material, you should not expect to be able to understand it. If you have forgotten material from your earlier math or physics classes, you may need to put in extra time for review.
Course Assessment in the Physics Department(IRB proposal #A10-131-01): We are conducting a study about student misconceptions and outcomes in Physics courses, which will help us improve this course. We invite you to participate in this research. You were selected as a possible participant because you are enrolled in a Physics course. Please read this form and ask any questions you may have before agreeing to be in the study. This study is being conducted by faculty in the Physics Department.
The purpose of this study is to identify common misconceptions students have coming into the different Physics courses, and to measure the outcomes of the courses in students’ problem solving skills and conceptual understanding of the material.
There is no benefit for participating in this study.
You may ask any questions you have now. If you have questions later, you may contact the Physics department chair (Paul Ohmann), at 651 962-5224. You may also contact the University of St. Thomas Institutional Review Board at 651 962-5341 with any questions or concerns.
Your consent to participate in this study is implied when you complete any assessment, survey or exam in this course, unless you notify the Physics department chair of your desire to be excluded from this research study.
Disclaimer: This syllabus and the following class schedule are subject to change as the semester progresses.
*TENTATIVE* Course Schedule
DATE / Reading / Class TopicSEP / 6 / W / G: 1.1 (skip 1.1.5), F preface (S Ch. 1) / Intro and some vector review
8 / F / G 1.3.1, parts of G 1.4 / Flux and Volume Integrals
11 / M / F 1 / Gauss’s Law for —integral form
13 / W / F 1 (S Ch2) / The Divergence Theorem and the differential form of Gauss’s Law for
15 / F / F 2 / Gauss’s Law for
18 / M / F 3 / Faraday’s Law—integral form
20 / W / F 3 (S Ch3) / Stoke’s Theorem and the differential form of Faraday’s Law
22 / F / F 4 / Ampère-Maxwell equation—integral and differential form
25 / M / Review
27 / W / Exam # 1
29 / F / G 2.3 (S Ch4) / Electric Potential
OCT / 2 / M / G 2.4 / Work and Energy
4 / W / G 2.5 / Conductors
6 / F / G 3.1 / Laplace’s Equation and Computational Methods
9 / M / G 3.2 / Method of Images
11 / W / G 3.3 / Separation of Variables
13 / F / G 3.4 / Multipole Expansion
16 / M / G 3.4 / Multipoles continued
18 / W / Review
20 / F / Exam # 2
23 / M / G 4.1 / Polarization
25 / W / G 4.2 / Polarized Objects
27 / F / NO CLASS – FALL BREAK
30 / M / G 4.3 / Displacement Fields
NOV / 1 / W / G 4.4 / Linear Dielectrics
3 / F / G 4.4 / Energy and Forces on Dielectrics
6 / M / Review
8 / W / G 5.1 – 5.3 / Magnetostatics review
10 / F / G 5.4 / Magnetic Vector Potential
13 / M / G 5.4 / Magnetic Dipoles
15 / W / Review
17 / F / Exam # 3
20 / M / G 6.1 – 6.2 / Magnetization
22 / W / G 6.3 / The Field
24 / F / NO CLASS – THANKSGIVING BREAK
27 / M / G 6.4 / Magnetic Materials
29 / W / G 7 / Review of Electrodynamics
DEC / 1 / F / G 8.1 / The Poynting Vector
4 / M / G 9.1 / The Wave Equation
6 / W / G 9.2 / Electromagnetic Waves
8 / F / G 9.3 / Waves in Matter
11 / M / G 9.4 / Absorption and Dispersion
13 / W / Review
15 / F / Review
20 / W / Cumulative Final Exam (10:30 – 12:30)
G = Griffiths, F = Fleisch, S = Schey