Unlike physics 225, we will have a quiz every week in PC226. Now that I have a bit more experience with using Moodle as our online tool, you would be able to see in real time what your grade is.
PC225 was an introduction to HOW physics is done. We used Newtonian Mechanics as an example. This course is more applied. The emphasis is on learning four practical fields of physics.
We will generalize Newton’s laws to the cases of waves, thermodynamics, and electromagnetism (E&M). We will come full circle with E&M waves. We will our knowledge from the first semester in developing most of these topics.
E&M (electromagnetism) is 50% of this class. That part is different from Newton’s laws. Thomas Kuhn refers to this in his book “The structure of Scientific Revolutions” as a “Pradigm Shift”. That is, we find out how an independent branch of physics that emerged in the 18th , 19th and 20th centuries works. This helps us learn how to use it. We start that part with Coulomb's law in electrostatics and obtain a “new creation” called electric and magnetic fields and potentials. We shall see how another “Paradigm Shift” called Einstein's relativity theory is equally useful in the context of E&M. If you end up being interested in it, a more thorough version of relativity, that will be presented in General Physics III.
More details in syllabus (coming soon)
- Teacher: Ran Sivron