Electricity and Magnetism

A journey through the electromagnetic spectrum!

This is a core course offered to the second year physics major students with Mechanics (PHY-102) as the prerequisite. The electromagnetic force, unifying electrical and magnetic forces, is one of the four fundamental forces and essentially responsible for almost all physical phenomena encountered in day-to-day experience. This includes static charges, lightning, electricity and high voltage power lines, permanent and electromagnets in domestic or industrial appliances, electromagnetic fields, mobile phones, radio transmitters and electromagnetic radiation. The course follows a traditional approach beginning with the Coulomb’s inverse square law force between stationary charges and currents, culminating in the Maxwell formulation of electromagnetism followed by a preliminary discussion of electromagnetic waves. The mathematical tools to develop the theory of static and dynamic properties of electric and magnetic fields in vacuum and matter include vector calculus and curvilinear coordinate systems which will be reviewed within the course.