PHYS 1304, Electricity and Magnetism for scientists and engineers. 2008 spring semester.

In this course we discuss the principles and concepts of electricity and magnetism, and their applications in sciences and engineering.  The emphasis is on physics concepts and problem solving skills and abilities. The students are required to memorize basic formulas. The ability to understand the problems at hand and decide which formula to use is the goal we want to achieve. 

The lectures are largely based on materials from "Physics: for Scientists and Engineers, Vol.2" by Serway and Jewett (ISBN-10: 0495385441 or ISBN-13: 978-0495385448). All lecture notes are posted in this page and students are encouraged to download them and use them as your course material.

Office hours: Tuesday and Thursday from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM (one hour before lecture time) in my office (Fondren Science Building 037); or by email appointment at least one week in advance.

Help sessions are held by Ms Ana Firan (afiran@physics.smu.edu) and Mr. Jack Norton (jnorton@physics.smu.edu) from 1 PM to 3 PM, Tuesday and Thursday in room 026. Our grader is Mr. Alex Liang (zliang@physics.smu.edu). Graded homework can be picked up in Alex's office (FS building, room 049) Wednesday mornings or Friday afternoons, or everyday after 8 PM. Please contact them for related questions.

We follow the school calendar: http://www.smu.edu/registrar/ and final example schedule: http://smu.edu/registrar/Final_Exam_Schedule/finalexam.asp in which our class is scheduled to Fri., May 9, 11:30 AM - 2:30 PM.

There are bi-weekly in-class open-book quizzes. The mid-term exam covers electricity and magnetism. The final exam covers the whole course material. Both exams are close-book with four page (letter size, single side) formula sheets allowed. Homework is due one week after the assignment. Homework is graded for 50% correctness and 50% completion. Once the homework key is posted, that homework is over due. No make-ups on quizzes, exams and homework assignments are allowed. Discussions among students and with the instructors about homework and quiz problems are highly encouraged. Students are required to understand all problems in the homework and in the quizzes, which define the scope of the mid-term and the final exams.

The final grade are computed based on homework (30%), quizzes (30%), the mid-term exam (20%) and the final exam (20%).  However those who score A in the final exam will get A in their grade report, regardless the averaged grade. There are bonus points associated with problems solved by students in class discussions, or mistakes (not typos or numerical mistakes!) found in the lecture notes by students.

Letter grade break points:

91.5 < A  < 100
87.5 < A- < 91.5
83.5 < B+ < 87.5
79.0 < B  < 83.5
75.0 < B- < 79.0
71.0 < C+ < 75.0
62.5 < C  < 71.0
50.0 < D  < 62.5
  0.0 < F  < 50.0

Syllabus:

grade report