Classical Electromagnetic Theory I
Professor Thomas Curtright
PHY650, Section HI
14 January - 10 May 2008
MWF 3:35-4:50 room 203
Grade = HW + Midterm + Final
Electrostatics, magnetostatic, Maxwell's equations,
continuous media, waves, antennas, resonant cavities,
wave guides. More or less ...
Home Work is due as assigned in class.
Midterm Exam, either in-class, 3:35-4:50 pm, Friday, 7
March, or take-home (to be decided).
Final Exam, either in-class, 3:35-4:50 pm,
Friday, 2 May, or take-home (to be decided).
Required text: W.
Panofsky and M.
Phillips, Classical
Electricity and Magnetism, 2nd edition (Dover, 2005).
This is not the usual book used for graduate E&M. The more
common choice is Jackson (see other
textbooks). Of course, you may also buy Jackson or other
texts, if
you have the means, and
you are encouraged to read other books if you have the time. In
my opinion, Jackson is a great reference. It is a classic
treatise on the subject. But I think it is not the best textbook
for students. In any case, we hope to cover the material in
Panofsky and Phillips Chapters 1-14, and also Chapter 24. We will
go through a systematic discussion of relativistic effects, and
formalism, in PHY651.
Homework
and graded problems:
These will be due about one or two weeks
after being assigned in lecture.
Other reading material:
Some other
textbooks.
Some of my
notes.
A bit of history is
here: Maxwell
and Riemann.
The content of the course is given, in summary, by the Lorentz force
law
and Maxwell's
equations:
where
where
An exact expression for the Coulomb constant is: 
