| Instructor: | Jim Crumley |
| Office: | 107 Peter Engel Science Center |
| Email: | jcrumley@csbsju.edu |
| Phone: | 363-3183 |
| Office Hour: | 3 pm odd days (or by appointment or just stop by) |
| Lecture: | 9:40-10:50 Days 246 |
| Room: | 167 Peter Engel Science Center |
| Textbook: | Introduction to Electrodynamics by David J. Griffiths, (Third Edition) |
| Web Site: | http://www.physics.csbsju.edu/341/ |
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 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.
Grading in this class will be based on homework, three mid-terms, and a final test. Each of these grades will be equally weighted, except for the final which will be worth double.
Homework will be assigned every cycle and will be due a cycle later. 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.
You can bring a single-sided cheat sheet to each test that has relevant formulas and constants on it.
In this class, we will cover roughly the first seven chapters of the textbook. We will spend about two class days on the first chapter, and roughly five class days on the rest. A tentative test schedule is shown below:
| Test 1 | February 10 | |
| Test 2 | March 16 | |
| Test 3 | April 18 | |
| Final Exam | May 4 | 8-10 am |