Physics attempts to describe nature with a minimal number of mathematical rules. With this set of rules it is possible to quantitatively describe and reproduce a rich set of things that we observe. The material covered in this semester was understood fully in the latter half of the 19th century, by Maxwell, Gauss, Faraday, and many others. This achievement made possible most of the comforts of modern life. Here is a picture of Mawell.
Physics remains a difficult subject which requires significant concentration. Only by carefully doing the homework in a quiet environment will you be able to master the material. I can not make it easy, but I will not throw curveballs. The material in the homework will consistently appear on the midterms and final.
The course will consist of homework, labs and quizzes, three midterms, and the final. The percentage each of these is worth is the following.
I will drop one midterm. For this reason there will be NO MAKE-UPS FOR MIDTERMS
| Lab and Quizzes | 10% |
|---|---|
| Homework | 10% |
| Midterm I | 25% |
| Midterm II | 25% |
| Final | 30% |
Homework is an essential part of the course and your grade.
The problems will be downloadable from the University of Texas website. To use this service one needs to do the following.
Everyone has a moment in the semester that it is impossible to do everything. Therefore, I will drop the lowest homework. Often it is impossible to tell which homework is the lowest -- some may be worth more than others for example. I will try to come up with the most rational way of "dropping the lowest" homework and apply this uniformly throughout the class.
The class meets Tuesday and Thursday in Laboratory Sciences East 308.
Please feel free to contact me at anytime. My official office hours are,
The book is Physics for Scientists and Engineers, by Serway and Jewet. 6th Edition.
First one is welcome to come to office hours. There is also Student Support Services
You do not have to come to class. But, I will give quizzes so if you miss class you could get a zero. However, if you tell my one day before (email before 5:00p.m.) that you will not be able to make it to class, and we have a quiz, we will arrange for you to take a separate similar (but not identical) quiz. What is "similar" will be decided by me. I do not need to know why you want to miss class and will not ask.
I will scan the lecture notes and put them here.
| Week 1 | l1 |
| Week 2 | l2, l3, Efield, lab1 |
| Week 3 | coulomb1, coulomb2, |
| Week 4 | gauss |
| Week 5 | pot1, pot2 |
| Week 6--Review | review1, review2 |
| Week 7 | examgrades, capacitors, cap_form |
| Week 8 | kirchoff.doc raw_form2.pdf current_form | Week 9 | Ampere's Law Summary and problems |
| Week 10 | Ampere's Law Summary and problems | Week 11-12 | the problem on last exam and Chp 29.23 which we did in class. , Problems on Faraday's Law | Week 13 | waves |