Class sessions: MWF, 10:40am, Dental School 102Professor: Katherine Benson
Rollins 1009, phone 7-4083, e-mail benson@physics.emory.edu
Office Hours: TuTh 3-4 pm
Grading: Participation and Oral presentation 33%,
Written homework 33%
Midsemester takehome exams 33%
This course will be taught in a seminar style. Material will be covered through the following activities, on a roughly weekly cycle: first, a detailed reading assignment, including text and sometimes lecture notes, anticipated by explanations and remarks on issues to watch for. Students are responsible for reading these materials, then working through their and my questions in class. Second, worked review problems will be provided, and students will be responsible for presenting and discussing these problems at the blackboard. Third, traditional problems will be assigned, for students to derive their own written solutions. These solutions will be graded, and for additional feedback I will also provide my own written solutions. When instructive, students may be asked to orally present these problems as well.
Students are encouraged to question, discuss, and help each other both in and out of class. Homework problems may be freely discussed, and strategies shared, so long as students write up their problem solutions independently.
There will be up to 4 midsemester takehome exams each covering specific segments of the course. These should be completed independently.
V. Barger and M. Olsson,Classical Mechanics, A Modern Perspective, 2nd edition, McGraw-Hill, New York (1995).
D. Griffiths, Introduction to Electrodynamics, 3rd edition, Prentice Hall, Upple Saddle River, NJ (1999).
This course was designed to cover the rudiments of both classical mechanics and classical electromagnetism in one semester. These two topics are each standard junior-level courses in a B.S. physics sequence, for students with both ample mathematical preparation and ample time to devote to a physics graduate school preparatory track. This course, instead, is designed for students who wish to study more physics, but without the extensive sequences in mathematics and classical physics. The focus is two-fold: covering the core topics in these courses, which are an assumed foundation in future elective or quantum mechanics courses; and introducing fundamental mathematical approaches that first arise in these courses, and remain useful throughout physical science and engineering. Here we address 3-dimensional classical physics more systematically, using and explaining calculus, vector calculus and differential equation techniques more sophisticated than those appearing in the intro physics sequence. We focus on establishing core physics intuition and connecting that intuition to mathematical technique.
We note that our texts (Barger & Olsson and Griffiths) are among the standard texts for junior classical mechanics and electromagnetism courses. We are simply covering only core topics in each, rather than the both faster and more extensive coverage of the usual two course sequence.
We will cover these topics:
Course handouts will be available online at |http://web.cc.emory.edu/PHYSICS/Faculty/Benson/254/254.html|. This includes weekly assignments, worked review problems, and homework and exam solutions.
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