1308, Electricity and Magnetism. 2007 spring semester.

In this course we will discuss the principles and concepts of electricity and magnetism, and their applications in life sciences.  The emphasis will be on physics concepts and problem solving abilities. The students will NOT be required to memorize any formulas. The ability to understand the problems at hand and decide which formula to use is the goal we will want to achieve.  

The lectures will be largely based on materials from "Physics: Calculus" the second edition, volume two, by Eugene Hecht, ISBN:0-534-37084-5. All lecture notes will be posted in this page and students are encouraged to download them and use them as your course material.

Office hours: anytime you find me in my office, or email/phone for appointments (except Wednesdays). A preferred time is one hour before and after our class time.

We will follow the school calendar: http://www.smu.edu/registrar/pdf/Calendar_2006-2007.pdf, and final example schedule: http://smu.edu/registrar/Final_Exam_Schedule/finalexam_spring2007.asp in which our class is scheduled to SAT., MAY 5, 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM.

There will be bi-weekly take-home quizzes plus open-book but in-class mid-term and final exams. Homework is due about one week after the assignment. Homework will be graded as 50% correctness, 50% completion. Once the homework key is posted, it is over due. Over due homework will not be graded. Make-up homework will get the 50% completion points if it is done in such a way that it is not a straight copy of the keys, instead there is explanation in words for each steps in solving the problems.  Discussions among students and with the instructors about homework and quiz problems are 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. Students are only required to solve problems in these two exams by themselves.

The final grade will be computed based on homework (30%), quizzes (30%), the mid-term exam (20%) and the final exam (20%).  The final exam will cover materials in the whole course and will be difficult. Whoever scores A (90%)  in the final exam will get A in his/her grade report, regardless the averaged grade. There will also be bonus points associated with problems solved by students in class discussions, or mistakes (not typos!) found in the lecture notes by students. Check the errata before you report a mistake.

A new policy for the final (for discussion on 4/24): if you choose not to take the final, your reporting grade will be calculated with mid-term having a weight of 40%. If you choose the take the final, the higher grade from the final and the midterm will be used in calculating for the reporting grade.

Public lecture announcement: lecture1.

Syllabus:

grade report (reported on 5/10/2007).