Classical Electromagnetic Theory II
Professor Thomas Curtright
PHY651, Section HI
27 August - 5 December 2008
MWF 3:35-4:50 room 203
Grade = HW + Midterm + Final
Interaction of radiation with
matter, multipole radiation, radiation reaction, relativistic
effects. More or less ...
Home Work is due as assigned in class.
Midterm Exam,
Thursday,
16 October,
take-home, available here
and due Monday, 27 October. (See here
for some conventions used in class.)
Final Exam, take-home, due Tuesday, 16
December.
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 13-24. After a long summer break,
I think it best to begin with some repetition of material from PHY650,
especially parts of Chapters 13 & 14.
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. (Also see my
notes from PHY650.)
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: 
