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Physics 241E is a calculus-based introductory physics course covering electricity and magnetism along with a general treatment of waves and wave optics. It is part of the required Engineering School curriculum.

Instructor:

S. Conetti, room 217 High Energy Physics building (434) 982-5371, e-mail: conetti@virginia.edu. Office hours Monday, Wednesday 2-3 pm, room 312 B in the Physics Building or by appointment.

Required text: Physics, vol. 2, Fishbane, Gasiorowicz, and Thornton, 3rd Edition (Prentice Hall) along with material on waves from vol. 1 (spring semester; ancillary text: Student Study Guide and Selected Solution Manual, Volume 2.

The aim of this course, which is a continuation of Physics 142E and has as a prerequisite the material of that course, is to teach you to understand the physical world and to solve problems about that world. Both elements are important to you. Your grade in the course will depend on your ability to solve problems. You will achieve such an ability by understanding the basic concepts and by practicing ona large variety of problems. The lectures are oriented towards helping you understand why and how we understand what we do about physics, not simply towards helping you learn how to plug in formulas in order to solve problems, and not simply towards helping you pass tests. There are extensive discussion sessions, led by a teaching assistant, where problem examples will be treated more explicitely. Understanding the concepts is the best long-term way for you to be able to solve the problems that an engineer faces. Problem solving skills are honed by doing problems. You should look at more problems than the ones assigned as homework, at least to convince yourself that you would know how to handle them. Feel free to consult with each other on how to do the problems, but don't put yourself in the position of copying answers from your partner(s). And, to validate your approach to any given problem, feel free to consult the TA's (or the course instructor during his office hours). But be aware that the TA's will be instructed not to give explicit information on how to solve any given homework problem.

Note: No make-up exams are given! With a valid excuse before the exam, the remaining elements of the course will be appropriately averaged. Without a valid excuse before the exam, the exam grade will be a zero.

The midtem exams will be a mixture of problems (like the ones you do in the homework or in the discussion sessions) and of conceptual, multiple choice questions; the final exams will be multiple choices.

Workshops: The workshops ( www.phys.virginia.edu/classes/241w.rmm5a.fall04) are labs, which will be completed in groups. All students should register for a workshop section. You must attend the first meeting on time, or your name will be dropped from that section. You must also buy the manual, which is available in the UVA bookstore. The workshops are an enjoyable way to work with your peers and increase your understanding of physics. Please note that the workshops are not formally part of this course but rather a separate entity and must be signed into or out of separately.

Homework: Homework problems will be posted on this syllabus and in the toolkit and will be due each week at 12 noon Monday morning. The homework problems have to be worked in full and clearly on paper, and must be returned, before the deadline, in the lockboxes located in the Physics Building ground floor (across from the vending machines). The homework should either be pledged or, if you do it in collaboration with some other student, should contain the statement "this homework was done in collaboration with xxyy". In order to create the overall homework grade, each week 2 of the assigned problems will be graded.

- The TA's for PHYS 241E will hold their sessions in the hours listed below, and will be available for help with problems or lecture material. During these sessions , which will last 50 minutes each, you will be reminded of the basic concepts you have learnt in class and then will be shown how to solve various problems related to the ones assigned as homework.

- The engineering school also provides tutoring assistance, consult the Dean's Office for specific hours.

Attendance policy: Attendance is not taken, but you are responsible for all assigned material, whether it is presented in lecture or not. You are also responsible for knowing the problem assignments and for any announcements that may be made in lecture of changes in the assignments, schedule, etc..

Session (Sections)	Date	Topic	Chapter(s)
#1 (1-3)	Aug. 24 Wed.	electric charges, forces	21
#2. (4-5)	Aug. 26 Fri.	continuous distribution of charges	21
#3. (1-3)	Aug. 29 Mon.	electric fields	22
#4. (4-5)	Aug. 31 Wed.	responses of charges to fields	22
#5. (1-3)	Sept. 2 Fri.	Gauss' law	23
#6. (4-5)	Sept. 5 Mon.	conductors and fields	23
#7. (1-3)	Sept. 7 Wed.	electric potentials	24
#8. (4-5)	Sept. 9 Fri.	potentials and fields	24
#9. (6-7)	Sept. 12 Mon.	potentials near conductors	24
#10. (1-4)	Sept. 14 Wed.	capacitors	25
#11. (5-6)	Sept. 16 Fri.	dielectrics	25
#12. (1-4)	Sept. 19 Mon.	current and resistance	26

#13. (7)	Sept. 21 Wed.	electric power	26
#14. (1-3)	Sept. 23 Fri.	DC circuits	27
#15. (4)	Sept. 26 Mon.	measuring instruments	27
#16. (5)	Sept. 28 Wed.	Time dependence in circuits	27
#17. (1-2)	Sept. 30 Fri.	magnetic fields	28

#18. (2-3)	Oct. 5 Wed.	magnetic forces on charges	28
#19. (4-5)	Oct. 7 Fri.	magnetic forces on currents	28
#20. (1-3)	Oct. 10 Mon.	making magnetic fields: Ampere's law	29
#21. (4-5)	Oct. 12 Wed.	Making magnetic fields: Biot-Savart law	29
#22. (1-2)	Oct. 14 Fri.	Faraday's law	30
#23. (2-3)	Oct. 17 Mon.	motional EMF	30

#24. (4-5)	Oct. 19 Wed.	time-varying fields, generators	30
#25. (1-3)	Oct. 21 Fri.	magnetic materials	31
#26. (1-2)	Ot.24 Mon.	inductance	32
#27. (3-4)	Oct. 26 Wed.	Inductance and RL circuits	32
#28. (5-7)	Oct 28 Fri.	Oscillations in circuits	32
#29. (1-2)	Oct. 31 Mon.	Transformers, R,L,C circuits	33
#30. (3-5)	Nov. 2 Wed.	RLC circuits	33
#31. (1-2)	Nov. 4 Fri.	Maxwell's equations	34
#32. (1-4)	Nov. 7 Mon.	Waves in mechanical media	14
# 33. (5-8)	Nov. 9 Wed.	Waves in mechanical media	14
# 34. (1-5)	Nov. 11 Fri.	Wave interference	15
#35. (2-4)	Nov. 14 Mon.	Electromagnetic waves	34

#36. (5)	Nov. 16 Wed.	Polarization	34
#37. (1-3)	Nov 18 Fri.	Wave interference	37

#38. (4-6)	Nov. 28 Mon.	Wave interference	38
#39. (1-3)	Nov 30 Wed.	Diffraction	38
#40. (4-5)	Dec. 2 Fri.	Applications	38
#41.	Dec. 5 Mon.	Review of modern physics	40

Assignment	Due Date	Problems
1	Monday, Sept 5
2	Monday, Sept 12
3	Monday, Sept 19
4	Monday, Sept 26
5	Tuesday, Oct 4
6	Monday, Oct 10
7	Monday, Oct 17
8	Monday, Oct 24
9	Monday, Oct 31
10	Monday, Nov 7
12	Monday, Nov 14
13	Monday, Nov 28
14	Monday, Dec 5

Discussion sessions will be held in Room 203 of the Physics bldg. at the following times