Physics 209
Fall 2002
University of California, Berkeley
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Instructor: Robert Littlejohn
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Office: 449 Birge
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Office Hours: MWF 12-1
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Telephone: 642-1229
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Email: physics209@wigner.berkeley.edu
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Lecture: 308 LeConte
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Time: MWF 11-12
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Discussion Section: Thursdays, 5:00-6:30pm, 329
LeConte
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TA: Alfredo Correa, alfredo@wigner.berkeley.edu
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Office Hours: Tu 2-3
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Office: 277 LeConte
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Text: Classical
Electrodynamics by J. D. Jackson
Prerequisites
The prerequisites for the course are a one-semester undergraduate
course in Electricity and Magnetism
(preferably a two-semester course) at the level of Griffiths,
Introduction
to Electrodyamics or Lorraine,
Corson and Lorraine, Fundamentals of Electromagnetic
Phenomena.
Grade, Exams
The grade will be based on homework, the midterm Exam,
and the final Exam (40% homework, 15%
midterm, and 45% final).
The
final exam will he held on Wednesday,
December 11, 12:30-3:30pm, in 150 GSPP (Goldman
School of Public Policy).
Homework Policy
Homework will be posted on this web site normally by Saturday
of each week. The first homework
will be due on Saturday, September 7 at 5:00pm.
All subsequent homeworks will be due on Friday
at 5:00pm. Homeworks should be placed in
the box labelled Physics 209 on the second floor of
LeConte, just before the breezeway going over to Birge.
Late homeworks will be accepted at 50%
credit up to one week late. Homeworks more than
one week late will not be accepted. Exception:
each student is allowed one free late homework
(up to one week late), no questions asked.
Course Outline
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Review of electrostatics and magnetostatics
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Special Relativity
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Radiation
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Scattering
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Diffraction
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Special Topics
Homework Assignments
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0. Read Chapters 1 and 2 of Jackson by Saturday, August 31.
There is nothing to be turned in this week.
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1. Homework in postscript or pdf
format, due Saturday, September 7.
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2. Homework in postscript or pdf
format, due Friday, September 13 at 5:00pm.
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3. Homework in postscript or pdf
format, due Friday, September 20 at 5:00 pm.
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4. Homework in postscript or pdf
format, due Friday, September 27 at 5:00 pm.
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5. Homework in postscript or pdf
format, due Friday, October 4 at 5:00pm.
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6. Homework in postscript or pdf
format, due Friday, October 11 at 5:00pm.
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7. Homework in postscript or pdf
format, due Friday, October 18 at 5:00pm.
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8. Homework in postscript or pdf
format, due Friday, October 25 at 5:00pm.
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9. Homework in postscript or pdf
format, due Saturday, November 2 at 5:00pm.
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10. Homework in postscript or pdf
format., due Friday, November 8 at 5:00pm.
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11. Homework in postscript or pdf
format, due Friday, November 22 at 5:00pm.
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12. Homework in postscript or pdf
format, due Friday, November 22 at 5:00pm.
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13. Homework in postscript or pdf
format, due Friday, December 6 at 5:00pm.
Homework Solutions
Homework solutions are available in pdf format only.
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Solutions to Homework #1.
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Solutions to Homework #2.
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Solutions to Homework #3.
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Solutions to Homework #4.
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Solutions to Homework #5.
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Solutions to Homework #6.
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Solutions to Homework #7.
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Solutions to Homework #8.
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Solutions to Homework #9.
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Solutions to Homework #10.
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Solutions to Homework #11.
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Solutions to Homework #12
Notes
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1. Notes on Green's Functions in postscript
or pdf format.
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2. Notes on SI and Gaussian Units in postscript
or
pdf
format.
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3. Notes on the Levi-Civita Symbol in postscript
or
pdf
format.
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4. Notes on Tensor Analyis in postscript
or pdf format.
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5. Notes on Thomas Precession in postscript
or pdf format.
Lecture Notes are Professor Littlejohn's hand-written notes
for lectures. They are not available for all
lectures, and no guarantees are made about how accurately they reflect
the actual lectures. Go to the
lecture notes web page.
Optional Notes are not required reading, they are just for your
edification if you are interested. The first set is
taken from an earlier Physics 221A course. They concern the theory
of rotations, which explains things like the
deeper theory underlying multipole expansions, how to get Y_lm's
with raising and lowering operators, how to
derive the addition theorem for spherical harmonics, the
meaning of irreducible tensors,and many other things.
Much of this is standard fare in 221A, and you may find these notes
useful also for that course.
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1. Notes on Rotations in 3D Space and Classical Mechanics,
in postscript or pdf
format.
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2. Notes on Rotations of Spin 1/2 Systems, in postscript
or pdf format.
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3. Notes on Representations of Rotations in postscript
or pdf format.
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4. Notes on Orbital Angular Momentum and Spherical Harmonics
in postscript or pdf
format.
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5. Notes on Coupling of Angular Momenta in postscript
or pdf format.
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6. Notes on Irreducible Tensor Operators in postscript
or pdf format.
The notes on spins in magnetic fields explain g-factors and such
things.
The notes on the Stark effect explain how molecular polarizabilities
are computed in quantum mechanics. The
notes on the hyperfine structure explain the use of the Fermi contact
term for the magnetic field of a particle.
The notes on the Electromagnetic Field Hamiltonian contain a discussion
of Coulomb gauge and transverse and
longitudinal vector fields. The notes on the Lorentz covariance
of the Dirac equation contains a discussion of
the Lie algebra of the Lorentz group.
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7. Notes on Spins in Magnetic Fields in postscript
or pdf format.
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8. Notes on the Stark Effect in postscript
or pdf format.
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9. Notes on Hyperfine Structure in postscript
or
pdf
format.
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10. Notes on the Electromagnetic Field Hamiltonian in postscriptor
pdf
format.
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11. Notes on the Lorentz Covariance of the Dirac Equation
in postscript or pdf
format.
The notes on action-at-a-distance electrodynamics tell the interesting
story of the Feynman-Wheeler theory.
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12. The Feynman-Wheeler theory, in pdf
format only (taken from Jagdish Mehra, The Beat of a Different
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Drum (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1994))..