PHYS 1308: Electricity and Magnetism, Prof. Dr. Tobias Neumann¶

This course covers electricity, magnetism, electromagnetic radiation, and both geometrical and physical optics. It is the second semester of introductory physics for life-science majors, and it follows the story of the "second unification" in physics: that electricity, magnetism and light are three faces of one interaction.

This is a 3-credit-hour course: three contact hours per week, and you should expect to spend 6–9 hours per week outside of class.

Common Curriculum: Quantitative Applications¶

This course carries the Quantitative Applications (QA) component of the SMU Common Curriculum. Its student learning outcome is:

Students will demonstrate an ability to solve problems within a specified domain through quantitative reasoning.

Within that outcome you will develop three supporting skills, all of which are exercised on the homework and on the partial-credit sections of the exams:

1. Identify the appropriate quantitative methods needed to solve domain-specific problems.
2. Apply appropriate quantitative methods to formulate solutions to domain-specific problems.
3. Solve domain-specific problems through quantitative reasoning.

Learning outcomes¶

Beyond the Common Curriculum outcome above, by the end of this course you will be able to:

• Explain the nature of electric charge, force, potential and fields, and describe the behaviour of electrical phenomena.
• Explain the basic components of electrical circuitry — conductors, batteries, resistors, capacitors — and analyse circuits containing them.
• Explain the nature of magnetism, the behaviour of magnetic phenomena, and the connection between electricity, magnetism and light.
• Explain the basic working of optical systems, from mirrors and lenses to interference and diffraction.
• Set up and solve quantitative problems in all of the above, and apply that understanding outside physics — to medicine, biology, chemistry, electronics and everyday life.

Textbook and WileyPLUS¶

The course follows Halliday, Resnick and Walker, Fundamentals of Physics, Volume 2, which is chapters 21 through 36. We cover all sixteen chapters.

A WileyPLUS subscription is required — all homework and all reading checks are assigned, submitted and graded there.

Assessment¶

The two midterms are written in the regular 80-minute class period; the final is the three-hour block set by the Registrar. All three are closed-book and consist of multiple choice together with a shorter section where you show your work for partial credit. Bring a scientific calculator — a formula sheet comes with the exam, so there is nothing to memorise.

Attendance¶

Attendance is recorded through Qwickly Attendance in Canvas. At the start of each meeting I announce a check-in code; you enter it in Canvas while you are in the room. The code is given in class only and is different every meeting.

Four absences are free, for any reason, with no documentation required. This policy exists so that illness, travel, interviews and emergencies are already accounted for — please do not ask for individual exemptions, and please do not send documentation. Beyond four, absences count against this component.

If a check-in fails — dead phone, app down, bad signal — that meeting simply comes out of your four free absences. That is what they are for, and it means neither of us has to spend time on it. Checking in for someone who is not in the room is an Honor Code violation, and it is one for both students.

Missed exams and missed deadlines¶

Every recurring component drops its lowest scores — two homework sets, three reading checks, four absences. Those drops are the make-up policy. They apply automatically, with no request and no reason given, and they exist precisely so that a bad week never has to be negotiated. There are no extensions on WileyPLUS work.

If you miss a midterm, the default is that its weight transfers to the cumulative final, which then counts 45% instead of 25%. You do not have to tell me why, and no documentation is required. Because the final is cumulative, the material is assessed either way.

Two things to know about that default. It puts 45% of your grade on a single three-hour sitting, so it is not automatically the better outcome for you: if you know in advance that you will have to miss an exam, come and talk to me first. And it is written for one missed midterm — if you are going to miss both, contact me as early as you can, while there are still options.

The final exam cannot be rescheduled or taken early. Book travel for after Saturday 12 December.

Grading philosophy¶

Grading in this course is standards based, not rank or percentile based. Each deliverable has a pre-defined number of points that can be achieved. Grades are assigned on your mastery of the material against the course requirements, not on how you compare with other students. Grades measure results, not effort, since there is no way to measure how much effort went into a problem set.

The numerical score is

where $w_c$ are the weights in the table above. The extra one percent is added so that students just at the margin of a better grade receive it. Under no circumstances is additional grade bumping performed at the end of the semester; we consider that unfair preferential treatment.

Accommodations and approved absences¶

The attendance buffer, the drop rules and the exam reweight above are defaults. They are set deliberately wide so that ordinary life does not have to be negotiated case by case, and so that you are never in the position of having to prove something to me in order to be treated fairly. They do not override an accommodation you are entitled to.

• Registered with DASS? Send me your accommodation letter and we will make the arrangements it calls for. Accommodations are not retroactive, so do this early rather than after the fact.
• A religious holy day? Notify me in writing at the start of the term. The University's deadline for such requests in Fall 2026 is Wednesday 9 September.
• An officially sanctioned University activity? Notify me, and arrange any affected work, before the date in question rather than after.

The same goes for a serious or prolonged medical situation, or anything being handled through the Office of the Dean of Students. In all of these cases, bring me in early rather than late.

Showing your work¶

On the partial-credit sections of exams, work that cannot be read cannot be graded. Specifically:

• Legible. If I cannot read your work well enough to follow your method, no partial credit can be assigned.
• Coherent. Write in short declarative sentences. Equations should flow like sentences, each building on the last, with a clear path from your starting point to your final result. A correct answer with no mathematical justification receives little or no credit.
• Boxed final answers, with correct units and the correct number of significant figures.

Collaboration¶

You are encouraged to work together on homework problems, and discouraged from copying. Working through a problem with someone else and then writing it up yourself is how most people learn physics; transcribing an answer is not. Acknowledging collaboration is like citing sources in a research paper — it credits the people who helped you while asserting that the work is your own.

Generative AI¶

Generative AI may be used in this course as a study aid. It may not be used to produce work you submit for a grade.

Asking an AI assistant to re-explain a concept a different way, to check your algebra, to generate extra practice problems, or to ask "why is this wrong?" about work you have already done yourself — all of that is fine, and genuinely useful. Used that way it is a patient tutor available at 2 AM.

Putting a WileyPLUS problem to an AI assistant and entering the answer it returns is not. This is not primarily an integrity issue; it is a self-harm issue, and the arithmetic is worth being direct about. Homework and reading checks are 30% of your grade and are unproctored. The exams are 65%, are written on paper in this room, and test exactly the skills the homework builds. A student who farms every unproctored point still needs roughly 89% across the three exams to earn an A, and will not get it, because the practice that would have produced it was outsourced. The homework is not a tax standing between you and a grade. It is the course.

Whenever you use these tools:

1. You are responsible for what you submit. AI systems produce confident, fluent, wrong physics — sign errors, invented formulas, misapplied approximations, and answers to a subtly different problem than the one you asked. If you submit it, you own it.
2. Do not upload other people's material — another student's work, the textbook, the solutions manual, exam material.
3. Attribute. If AI assistance materially shaped something you hand in, say so, in the same spirit as citing a source or acknowledging a study partner. Unattributed use can be treated as academic dishonesty under the SMU Student Honor Code.
4. Not during exams. All three are closed-book, on paper, and no network-capable device may be used.

If you are unsure whether a particular tool or use counts, ask me before you use it. I would much rather answer that in advance than adjudicate it afterwards.

Regrade requests¶

Requests must be made in writing within seven days of the grade being posted. Note that a regrade is a genuine re-review of the whole question: any additional errors found during that review will also change the score, so you stand to gain or lose. This is the same standard applied to the review of any professional work.