515 (Spring 2017)

PHYS 515:  Electrodynamics  (Spring quarter, 2017)

M W (or W F) 11:00-12:20 PAA A114

Instructor:   Silas Beane           B457   OH:  Wed  5:00-6:00pm

TA:              Francis Walsh       B149   OH:  Thu  2:30-3:30pm

Subject matter and textbook

This is the third quarter of a year-long sequence in graduate-level electrodynamics. The text for the course is 

Classical Electrodynamics by Jackson.  An educated person should have pretty good familiarity with Chapters 1-10,16 

of Jackson as well as the chapters on special relativity.  In this second quarter we will cover approximately Chapters 10-. 

There will be several mathematical interludes throughout the quarter, however these will always occur in the context of 

specific issues in electrodynamics. A secondary reference text for E&M is Modern Electrodynamics by Zangwill, and a 

useful text for mathematical issues is Mathematics for Physicists by Dennery and Krzywicki.

Jackson for Life

Communication

I strongly encourage students to communicate with me by email for administrative issues. I'll regularly communicate with the class by email. 

But, please, no physics questions via email! Unless they are of the yes-no variety they will likely go unanswered. If necessary you may attempt 

to visit me outside of office hours but please do not be offended if I'm unable to speak with you immediately.

Reading assignments

There will be weekly reading assignments posted on the calendar below. I will usually not remind you about this; it will be your responsibility

to keep track of the calendar and to do the readings ahead of lecture. Failure to do the readings may result in you being unable to follow what

we do in the class period.

Homework, exams and grades

The grades for this course will be based on homework (30%), a midterm exam (30%) and a final exam (40%). The final exam will be comprehensive. 

There will be weekly problem sets due in my office on Friday before 5pm. In grading there will be a strong emphasis on neatness and logic of presentation. The 

homework will be long and difficult. If you start working on an assignment the day before it’s due, you will not finish it in time. Late homework will not be accepted 

unless there is a compelling rationale. I believe that most of what you’ll get out of this class will be from the homework. I encourage you to work on the homework in 

groups. However, the work that you hand in must be your own, and you must list your collaborators on your manuscript as well as any references you have used (e.g. 

if you find a solution to a problem on the web, you must cite the url). I take this very seriously; a failure to acknowledge sources may result in a loss of all credit for the 

assignment, or worse. Exams in this class will be of the take-home variety. 

Calendar