Welcome to Physics 441!
Spring 2021
General Information
Instructor: John S. Colton
Email: john_colton@byu.edu
Office: N335 ESC
Office hours TBA
TAs:
- Isa Kohls
- Ethan Edwards
Max
- HW, Grades, Syllabus, and Schedule: //max.byu.edu/20213-phscs441/
Handouts
Here are handouts for/from various class periods (or, in most cases, "virtual handouts," as I won't generally hand out physical copies of these).
- Griffiths-front-and-back-covers.pdf
- Parallel Equations for the Electric and Magnetic Fields.pdf - List of most of the important equations in Phys 441, organized according to electric and magnetic field versions of similar equations
- lecture 1 - What you should already know about electric field and potential.pdf
- lecture 6 - field from a spherical shell.nb - Mathematica code demonstrating the "Assuming" command
- lecture 14 - relaxation examples.pdf - output images for some relaxation examples shown in class
- lecture 15 - charge density from image problem.nb - Mathematica notebooks for the canonical image problem
- lecture 16 - orthogonality of sine functions.nb - Mathematica notebook demonstrating the orthogonality of sine functions
- lecture 16 - separation of variables - 2D semi-infinite.nb - Mathematica notebook for separation of variables 2D semi-infinite problem
- lecture 16 - separation of variables - 3D cube.nb - Mathematica notebook for separation of variables 3D cube problem
- lecture 17 - legendre polynomials.pdf - summary of information about the Legendre polynomials
- lecture 19 - worked SOV problem given sigma on a shell.pdf - worked separation of variables problem discussed very quickly in class
- lecture 20 - field lines of a pure electric dipole.nb - Mathematica notebook to plot the field lines of a pure electric dipole, namely E = C/r3 (2 cos(theta) r-hat + sin(theta) theta-hat). I didn't show this plot in class this semester, but did talk about how that electric field formula is special.
- lecture 23 - Electric fields around spheres.pdf - figures from Griffiths of electric fields around spheres
- lecture 32 - field of magnetized cylinder - z axis.nb - Mathematica notebook to plot the magnetic field from a magnetized cylinder
- lecture 39 - Gaussian units.pdf - handout for lecture 39 on Gaussian units (not in Griffiths)
Past Exams
Here are a few actual exams from past semesters. If you are using these to study, I highly recommend you work out the exams on your own BEFORE looking at the solutions. Also note that the coverage from year to year is not necessarily consistent, both in terms of overall material covered and material covered for each exam. In particular in many previous semesters I covered some advanced topics involving circuits which I don't plan to cover this semester. Also sometimes some Ch 7 material is covered on Exam 3, sometimes not. There may be other differences.
- Exam 1
- Exam 2
- Exam 2 - Spring 2016.docx | Exam 2 - Spring 2016 - solutions.pdf
- Exam 2 - Fall 2016.docx | Exam 2 - Fall 2016 - solutions.pdf- Oops, looks like there are a couple of errors in the solutions:
- Problem 1.9 (multiple choice) - my logic is good, but I accidentally wrote // instead of perpendicular in my description of the second boundary condition.
- I dropped a negative sign from the bound volume charge density of problem 5.
- Exam 3 - See note above about the difference in material from previous semesters
- Final Exam
- Final Exam - Spring 2016.docx | Final Exam - Spring 2016 - solutions.pdf
- Final Exam - Fall 2016.docx | Final Exam - Fall 2016 - solutions.pdf (with last page removed, since it was used as a homework problem in a later semester)