Instructor: Dr. Randy Kissack
Office: Room 138A, P & AB
Email: rkissack@uwo.ca Please use your UWO email account when emailing me.
Office hours (tentative): Mondays and Wednesdays 1-3 pm, or by appointment
Required textbook: Introduction to Electrodynamics, by David J. Griffiths
(3rd edition, 1999). It is in the UWO Bookstore. The cost is $120.95.
It is on 2 hour reserve at the Taylor Library.
Course assessment:
· Assignments ( roughly 6 or 7) – 25%
· Midterm test – 35%
· Final Exam – 40%
Regarding assignments – collaboration is OK, but submitted work must be your own and not simply a copy of someone else’s work.
· There will be handouts from time to time during the course.
· Course content, in a nutshell: Principally, our focus is the determination of electric and magnetic fields (as well as the attendant scalar and vector potentials) for a variety of charge and current distributions, and in different kinds of media. We begin with time-independent situations and later consider time-dependent phenomena.
· Primarily a theory course. The treatment is classical (vs. quantum). As expected, the level of mathematical sophistication is higher here than in earlier courses. It is a stepping stone to Electromagnetic Theory II and graduate courses in electromagnetism.
·
Four
general areas of unequal length:
o
Mathematical
preliminaries (Vector analysis, Dirac δ-function, Helmholtz theorem)
o Electrostatics (Charges at rest; Electric field E, Scalar potential V)
o Magnetostatics (Steady currents; Magnetic field B, Vector potential A)
o Electromagnetism (Time varying situations; Maxwell’s equations [VERY IMPORTANT]; Electromagnetic waves)
· While we will follow Griffiths fairly closely, we won’t cover every single topic, and some subjects (e.g., Gauss’ Law) will be treated slightly differently.
·
Intangibles,
other thoughts:
o To help you further along the way TO THINK LIKE PHYSICISTS.
o To give an appreciation of the mathematical beauty of the subject.
o To place more tools in your “mathematical toolbox”.
I.
MATHEMATICAL
PRELIMINARIES (
- Review of line, surface and volume integrals;
- Gradient, divergence and curl; Divergence and Stokes’ theorems
- Curvilinear coordinates, vector identities
- Dirac δ-function
- Important results from vector field theory
II. ELECTROSTATICS (Chapters 2 – 4)
- All of Chapter 2: Coulomb’s law, E and V and their properties, such as divergence and curl; electrostatic energy, conductors
-
Chapter 3: Section 3.1 on
we will not cover the separation of variables (section 3.3).
- Chapter 4: Electric fields in matter (the electric polarization P, the electric displacement D and susceptibility). We will cover most of this chapter, except likely parts of
section 4.4.
III. MAGNETOSTATICS (Chapters 5, 6)
- Chapter 5: Most of chapter 5 (Lorentz law; Biot-Savart law; curl and divergence of B, magnetic vector potential A. We will not cover the multipole expansion of A.
-
Chapter 6: Magnetic fields in matter (including the
Magnetization M and the Auxiliary
Field H): just how much of chapter 6
we cover will depend on time constraints.
IV. ELECTROMAGNETISM (Chapters 7, 9)
-
Chapter 7: Electromotive Force, Ohm’s Law;
Electromagnetic induction and Faraday’s law;
MAXWELL’S EQUATIONS
-
Chapter 9: Electromagnetic waves in vacuum and in
matter. We will cover sections 9.1—9.3
and possibly 9.4. Experience suggests we
will not have time for the section on waveguides.
-
NB Regarding
Chapter 8: Experience again suggests that we will not have time to cover
this interesting chapter on conservation laws.
It will be covered in Electromagnetic Theory II.