PHYSICS 1351

Intermediate Electricity and Magnetism

Note: This syllabus is available on the WWW at

http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~cls/courses/p1351

TERM (Fall 2005-2006)

• Lecturer: Dr. Chandralekha Singh

• Office: 218 A Allen Hall

• Office hours: after class or stop by anytime you find me in the office

• Phone: 624-9045

• E-mail (BEST WAY TO CONTACT ME): clsingh@pitt.edu

• Lectures: Mon, Wed, Fri 10-10.50 am, (Thaw 11)

• Text: Introduction to Electrodynamics by D. Griffiths, Third edition, Prentice Hall

• Grader: K. Lee (TA office: 223 OEH, phone:624-6226)

• Grader's email kwl7+@pitt.edu

Goals and Objectives

The major goal of this electricity and magnetism course is to enable you to develop logical reasoning skills to explain or predict diverse phenomena in everyday experience, and to become good problem solvers and independent learners. I encourage you to participate fully in class discussions. Physics knowledge is hierarchical: new concepts rely heavily on solid understanding of prior material. I strongly encourage you to ask questions to clarify your doubts. Remember that all questions are good questions, and there is a good chance that if you are having trouble understanding a concept, others are also struggling with the same concept. "Plug-and-chug" approaches to physics are neither useful for developing problem solving, reasoning and higher order thinking skills that I hope you will develop nor likely to produce satisfactory results on examinations. I also want you to remember that struggling is a very natural part of learning. Do not get discouraged.

Course Description

This course will be significantly more mathematical than the other physics courses you have encountered so far. Therefore, I will spend some time at the beginning of the course reviewing the mathematical preliminaries. We will cover chapters 1-6 which include topics in electrostatics and magnetostatics. The lecture material will follow the text fairly closely, and a majority of the assignments will be drawn from the text. Hence, it is a good idea for you to purchase the text or have regular access to it. There will be a copy (or copies) on reserve in the Physics Library in OEH. There may be some assignments from outside the book once in a while. It is highly recommended that you read the relevant chapter ahead of time. There may also be material covered in the class and in some homework assignments that will not be from the book. It is your responsibility to come to the class and to have knowledge of the material covered from the book and out of the book. You are expected to have a working knowledge of calculus.

Online Stuff using Courseweb

Useful information including assignments for this course will be available at the Courseweb site for this course. You can log on to this site by going to http://courseweb.pitt.edu and typing your university unix user name and password. This site can also be used for discussion forums related to this course in which your instructor and fellow classmates can participate.

Homework

Homework is an integral part of learning the material of this course. The homework will be assigned every Monday and collected the following Wednesday. The solutions will be posted on the courseweb the same week by Friday. It is strongly recommended that you discuss the course material and homework with your peers but you CANNOT copy others homework solutions. You are strongly encouraged to work on the questions/problems yourself before you get help from peers/instructor. There may be unannounced quizzes in the class once in a while. Each quiz will count for half of each homework grade. Homework/quiz performance will count approximately 25% in determining the final grade.

Due to the importance of the homework in helping you learn and apply the conceptual matter under discussion, and to prepare for examinations, you are highly encouraged to try as many of the assigned problems/questions as possible before the solutions are posted in the physics library.

Peer Instruction

To ensure that you are understanding the underlying concepts covered during the lecture, I will interrupt the class several times during lectures to pose a conceptual question. You will be asked first to think about the question by yourself, and later discuss it with your neighbor. Then, I will poll the class to see how many of you obtained the correct answer.

Grading Policy

There will be three in-term exams and a cumulative final examination. The final examination time can be found from registrar's office. The in-class midterm exams are (tentatively) expected to fall on:

• Exam #1 Fri, Sept 30

• Exam #2 Fri, Oct 28

• Exam #3 Fri, Dec 2

The lowest performance of the three in-term exams will be dropped. The course grade is expected to be determined by two in-term exam grades (20% each), the final exam (35%), and the homework grade (25% for homework/quizzes). There will be ABSOLUTELY no make-up midterm examinations. The midterm or final exam cannot be given ahead of time or later so please make sure you are present during the exams.

If you have a disability for which you are or may be requesting an accommodation, you are encouraged to contact both your instructor and the Office of Disability Resources and Services, 216 William Pitt Union, (412) 648-7890/(412) 383-7355 (TTY), as early as possible in the term. DRS will verify your disability and determine reasonable accommodations for this course. Academic integrity is very important. Anybody found cheating in the course will obtain a failing grade in the course.