Welcome to Physics 151
General Physics II
John F. Devlin, Instructor
Physics 151 studies the connections between electricity, magnetism and optics.
Two hundred years ago these three subject areas were seen as distinct and unrelated.
In this course we will explore the connections between the three areas. Those
connections can be summarized in four, seemingly, simple statements. They are:
1) Electric charges produce electric fields in their environment; the electric
field produced by a single infinitesmal charge varies inversely with the square of the distance
from the charge.
2) Magnetic poles produce magnetic fields in their environment; the magnetic
field produced by a single infinitesmal pole varies inversely with the square of the distance
from the pole. Magnetic poles always occur in pairs (even at the most microscopic
level) that have opposite polarity; thus it is not possible to have a net magnetic current.
3) Moving electric charges (electric currents) and/or changing electric fields produce
magnetic fields.
4) Changing magnetic fields produce electric fields.
Do you see from these statements that there are real similarities between electric
and magnetic phenonmena? And, at the same time, do you also see that there are
also some real dis-similarities? This course explores both the similarites and the dis-similarities.
Furthermore this course shows that the field of optics is but a subset of the
study of electric and magnetic phenomena!
Yet, the most impressive success of this subject matter is that the four statements
made above can be written down in a very coherent set of mathematical statements.
These statements are collectively referred to as Maxwell's Equations for electromagnetic phenomena. They are:
By the end of this course these apparently complex statements will be meaningful to the diligent student. Are you one of these students?
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