56-3810 Electricity and Magnetism

This course addresses fundamental concepts and principles of electromagnetism. Students will learn about the important historical underpinnings of the subject, including Benjamin Franklin’s experiments on electric charge, Michael Faraday’s work on electric and magnetic fields (and how these are intertwined), and James Maxwell’s elegant combination of these ideas into his famous equations. From these equations, students will learn to derive the wave nature of light and all other electromagnetic radiation. To progress in this course, students must become familiar with key ideas in multivariable calculus, the mathematics invented for understanding electromagnetism.

3 Credits
SC
Requisites PREREQUISITES: 56-2830 Fundamentals of Physics I and 56-2721 Calculus II