Your Cruise Director: Gabe Spalding

	Classical Electrodynamics has its limitations: Images at left, right, and below were published in Applied Physics Letters by E. Olson, G. C. Spalding, A. M. Goldman, M. Rooks. Our work on a "New Method for Fabricating Ultra-Narrow Metallic Wires," resulted in large-scale integration of 15-nm wires onto these templates. Chips with even smaller line widths are now mainstream, calling in many ways, for a Quantum Mechanical treatment of electronic states (see PHYS 306). Moreover, our recent work, e.g., on so-called Ghost Imaging, requires quantization of the electromagnetic field itself (see PHYS 317). Yet PHYS 406 covers only Classical Electrodynamics, which still remains at the very core of much of modern discourse.
Electricity and Magnetism		Electricity and Magnetism

Meetings are currently scheduled for MWF at these spacetime coordinates:
CNS room E106, 10:00am - 10:50am
As a group, you will discuss whether there is any need for changes to these scheduled meeting times.

Because of the density of information associated with this course, it is imperative that you not lag behind in your reading. The following course requirement has been designed to aid in this regard:

By 9:00am on the morning of each class meeting, you are expected to post a "note of status" to the class discussion page on Piazza. This is simply a list of (three or so) questions or comments you have regarding the material to be covered in class. I want you to really analyze whether or not you understand the reading. The depth of your considerations, as reflected in your status notes and in your classroom participation, will account for 10% of your final course grade.

If the material in your primary text is not clear at any point, it is your responsibility to seek out clarifying materials (either from your intro-level texts or other references) and to share insights with the rest of the class during our meetings. Please come to the course meetings prepared for lively discussion.

Accommodations: Tend your Brain!

Grading:

• Homework.........................................................30%
• Exams (in-term + final)........................................60% (total)
• Class Project, & Participation........10%

Electricity and magnetism is a "bread and butter" topic for many scientists and engineers. It is also a required course for the Concentration in Optics & Photonics. We will all work together to enhance what our primary references present, with the goal of helping one another identify and develop personal interests. It is necessary for us to work many problems in order to improve your level of understanding, and your facility with advanced mathematics. We will call upon the mathematical techniques covered in Math Methods and Theoretical Mechanics, and we will probably develop (or scrape the rust off of) a few others. Mathematica will be used on a semi-regular basis in homework assignments; however, no previous Mathematica experience will be required. IWU pays a fee so that our students can install this software at no extra charge on their own personal computers. Instructions for installation are available at this link.

Electricity and Magnetism, 3rd edition, by E. M. Purcell (Cambridge, United Kingdom, 2013). Note: earlier editions use a completely different set of units, and so it is important to ensure that you get the 3rd edition. (This will be our PRIMARY TEXT, so you must purchase this!)

The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume 2, by R. P. Feynman, R. B. Leighton, and M. Sands (Addison-Wesley). This supplementary material is openly available online.

Electricity and Magnetism (MIT OpenCourseWare), supplemented by the beautiful MIT TEAL visualizations. This supplementary material is openly available online.

Highly Recommended Reference Material:

Your texts from previous coursework (especially, your Intro Physics text, which is the most useful encyclopedia you could have, simply by virtue of the fact that you've spent a lot of time working through it, and are so familiar with the frameworks and abstractions that it is constructed around), and...

Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences, by Mary Boas (which is a wonderful text).

Other References which will occasionally prove useful as supplements:

Div, Grad, Curl, and All That, by H. M. Schey

Introduction to Electrodynamics, by David J. Griffiths (Prentice-Hall)

Field, Force, Energy and Momentum in Classical Electrodynamics, Revised Edition, by Masud Mansuripur (Bentham e-books, 2017).

Foundations of Electromagnetic Theory, 4th ed., by J. R. Reitz, F. J. Milford, and R. W. Christy