Physics 331: Electricity and Magnetism
James Cook's Physics 331: Electricity and Magnetism
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Lecture Plan and Notes:
I should post my handwritten Lecture Notes from Physics 331 of Fall 2025 here. Probably they're just ripped out of Griffiths, except when they're not.
- Lecture 1: Vectors and Calculus: index notation for calculus and vectors.
- Lecture 2: Coordinate Frames: from geometry and calculus.
- Lecture 3: Dirac Delta Device: special nature of Coulomb field, introduction of Dirac Delta in one and three dimensions.
- Lecture 4: Static Electric Field: Coulomb field, field lines and derivation of Gauss Law.
- Lecture 5: Gauss Law and Dirac Deltas: Gauss Law and basic spherical, cylindrical and planar examples, also we study how the Dirac Delta function plays into these examples.
- Lecture 6 7: From Electric Fields to Potentials: interconnection of E-field, potential and charge density. Calculational techniques, conservative vector field properties of E, boundary conditions for field and potential. Formulation of potential either from integration of density or from integration of known E-field, conductors. (this concludes Chapter 2 of Griffiths)
- Lecture 8: Uniqueness Theorem for Laplace's Equation I included the explicit application to the method of images. I merely include the most important example of the method of images and how it allows us to derive the induced charge on the conducting plane due to a single point charge above the plane.
- Lecture 9: Laplace's Equation in Spherical or Cartesian Coordinates (separation of variables and Fourier techniques)
- Lecture 10: Laplace Equation in Spherical or Cylindrical coordinates (ok, we didn't get very far into the cylindrical case)
- Lecture 11: Legendre Polynomial Solutions of Laplace's Equation
- Lecture 12: Multipole Expansion potentials and fields can be seen as superposition of poles at origin
- Lecture 13: Electrostatics in Matter concept of polarization, dipole moment, bound charge in insulators
- Lecture 14: Electric Displacement and Linear Dielectrics construction of D, susceptibility and permitivity in linear dielectrics, boundary values, nontrivial curl of polarization of bar electret
- Lecture 15: Crystals, Capacitors and Energy summary thoughts about end of Chapter 4 in on Electrostatics in matter.
Missions for Physics 331:
- Mission 1: Vectors, Calculus and the Dirac Delta
- Mission 2: Electrostatics, finding electric fields and potentials.
- Mission 3: Electrostatics, method of images, solutions of Laplace equation.
- Mission 4: Electrostatics in matter.
Solved Problems from 3rd ed. of Griffiths:
These solutions are mine from my undergraduate work at NCSU in the previous millennium.
Notes from my time at NCSU:
These are probably not helpful, I post them here for my amusement. These are based on the 3rd edition of Griffith's Introduction to Electrodynamics
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Last Modified: 9-22-2025