The Department of Physics

Course Description

This course is designed to introduce the student to topics in Electricity and Magnetism. Understanding Physics is crucial to the study of all sciences. Physics is the study of matter, energy, space and time and gaining a better understanding of this subject is a stepping stone to understanding the world and many of the new technologies being developed today. This course requires the use of Calculus, Vector analysis and Complex variable theory to understand the basic concepts in Electricity and Magnetism. Through in-class discussions, problem-solving sessions and practical sessions, the student will have the opportunity to improve his/her ability to reason through challenging situations in the physical world using basic principles to develop appropriate solutions. This course will be assessed through in-course assignments, practical exercises/reports and a final examination.

CONTENT

The topics covered address: Electrostatics: Charge, Coulombs Law , The Electric Field and its determination by integration and Gauss’s Law; Work, Energy and Electric Potential; Potential for point charge and extended sources; Determination of Electric Field from electric  potential and vice versa; Capacitance; Energy stored in capacitors; Dielectrics; Current Electricity; Field within a wire; Electric current; Current Density; Ohm’s Law; Resistance across a coaxial cable; Resistances in series and parallel; Energy dissipated; DC circuits and Kirchhoff’s Law; Charging and discharging of capacitors; Time constant; Magnetism: The phenomenon; Definition of the magnetic force and comparison with the electric force and gravitation; Force on a wire carrying a current; torque on a rectangular wire carrying a current; Motion of charge in a magnetic field; Lorentz force; Mass spectrometer, cyclotron; Hall Effect; Biot-Savart Law; Ampere’s Law and applications; Earth’s magnetic Field Faraday’s Law; B,H and M vectors; Inductance; Combination of laws to introduce Maxwell’s Electromagnetic equation for free space propagation; AC Theory: AC currents and voltages; Complex and Vector and Phasor representations; LCR circuits, Q factor, power; Transformers.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

This course emphasizes the application of the basic principles pertaining to Electricity & Magnetism to solve practical problems in these areas of study. Upon completion of this course students should have successfully attained adequate conceptual and analytical comprehension of Electricity & Magnetism. Thus students will be able to:

• Perform quantitative analyses of basic problems in Electrostatics and Electrodynamics.
• Apply Gauss’s Law, Ampere’s Law, and Biot-Savart Law to solving practical problems in electricity and magnetism.
• Calculate energy storage in capacitors.
• Derive the time constants of Resistor-Capacitor circuits.
• Explain and analyze the behavior of alternating currents in RLC circuits.
• Perform and interpret the results of simple experiments and demonstrations of physical principles.

GOALS/AIMS

The goals and aims of PHYS 1223 are:

• To reinforce and extend the students’ understanding of the fundamental Physics concepts in Electricity and Magnetism.
• To provide students with the required foundation to progress to the advanced Physics courses.
• To excite students such that they would desire to pursue advanced Physics.

In the laboratory experimental processes, the students are expected to deepen their understanding of the relations between experiment and theory.

Assessment