PHYS 4392 Web Sites   F13

Last edit: 17 Aug 2013

Supplemental lecture notes

Proof of A x (B x C) = B(A · C) - C(A· B) using the Levi-Civita tensor ε ijk .
Equations for test 1.
Equations for test 2.
Legendre_decomp.nb. Mathematica notebook for the decomposition of a function into Legendre polynomials.

General cultural links

Famous essay by Eugene Wigner on the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences."
An historical sketch of electromagnetism

Self-study resources

An excellent resource accompanying Pollack and Stump's Electromagnetism that contains self-test
questions and answers, practice exams, useful tables and chapter summaries
is located here .
Richard Fitzpatrick has wonderful lecture notes on electromagnetism written at the level of our text.
A graduate level online text by Robert Brown online textbook may be useful to the ambitious.

Electrostatic Java Applets

2-dimensional electrostatic fields for various charge configurations (Paul Falstad)
An electric field applet with a distribution of charges (Caltech)

Magnetostatic Applets

3-dimensional magnetostatic field in a variety of circumstances. (Paul Falstad)

Special relativity and electromagnetism Applets

Field of a moving point charge. (Caltech)
Origin of the v x B term in the lorentz force. (Caltech)

Diverse helpful software

gnuplot (A freeware plotting and fitting package.)
Online integrator from Mathematica®
Note: SMU has a site license for Mathematica®. Contact ITS for details.

Just for fun

Dr. Electric's high voltage site. An amusing (and informative) site showing
dramatic time dependent electromagnetic effects. Includes videos, photos and technical details.

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