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Physics 544, Spring 2011
Applications of Electromagnetic Theory

Physics 544

Instructor: Larry Sorensen
Email: seattle@u.washington.edu

Office: B-435 Physics-Astronomy Building
Office Hours: Right after class--or by appointment
Telephone: 543-0360

Course information
Exam

There are four required papers for this class. I want you to understand the physics.
I know that you will learn the physics better by writing a paper about it.

For each paper, read some or all of the source material and then write a paper that will
convince me that you read and understand the physics.

You may find it helpful to find and read additional source material.

(1) Read Einstein's 1905 paper and Minkowski's 1908 paper
Einstein's 1905 Special Relativity Paper
Minkowski's 1908 Spacetime Paper
Commentary on Einstein's Special Relativity Papers

More about Einstein's 1905 Special Relativity Paper
A. On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies
B. On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies
Kinematic subtleties in Einstein’s first derivation of the Lorentz transformations
Arthur Miller's Book
Understanding and Correcting Einstein’s 1905 Time Transformation?

More about Minkowski
What is missing from Minkowski's Raum and Zeit Lecture?
Hermann Minkowski’s approach to physics
Minkowski's Space-Time: From Visual Thinking to the Absolute World
Hermann Minkowski and the Scandal of Spacetime
Minkowski’s Modern World
Minkowski, Mathematicians, and the Mathematical Theory of Relativity
The Non-Euclidean Style of Minkowskian Relativity

(2) Read some or all of Einstein's six E=mc^2 papers
Einstein's 1905 E=mc^2 Paper
Einstein's 1906 E=mc^2 Paper
Einstein's 1907a E=mc^2 Paper
Einstein's 1907b E=mc^2 Paper
Einstein's 1912 E=mc^2 Paper
Einstein's 1915 E=mc^2 Paper
Commentary on Einstein's E=mc^2 Papers

Or read some of these modern papers
1976 Definitions of mass SR
1987 Does mass really depend on velocity, dad?
1989 Okun: Physics Today
1990 Rindler: Physics Today
1991 The concept of energy
1991 IOP Letters
1991 Velocity dependent mass
1995 SR GR mass
1998 Okun: EJP
2005 The use and abuse of mass in SR
2006 Okun: Mass in SR
2006 The Spring
2008 Okun: Isn't the Lord laughing?
2009 Hecht: Einstein's E and m AJP
2009 Okun: AJP
2010 Styer
2011 Brainwashed by Newton
2011 Hecht: Defining mass TPT
Reasons for mass in SR

(3) Read General Relativity from A to B by Robert Geroch
General Relativity from A to B

(4) Read QED: The Strange Story of Light and Matter by Richard Feynman
QED Chapter 1
QED Chapter 2
QED Chapter 3
QED Chapter 4
Preface to the 1985 Edition by Ralph Leighton
Preface to the 2006 Edition by Tony Zee
You can access the video versions of the four chapters here
The 1985 book is compared with the 1979 New Zealand lectures here
Feynman in New Zealand

Textbooks

We will use chapters from a number of textbooks for this class.
After each lecture, I will tell you the chapter(s) that I used to prepare the lecture.

Primary Textbooks

Classical and Relativistic Electrodynamics
Feynman volume 2
Born and Wolfe

Special Relativity
Dray The Geometry of Special Relativity
Taylor and Wheeler Spacetime Physics (first edition)
Taylor and Wheeler Spacetime Physics (second edition)

General Relativity
Geroch General Relativity from A to B
Taylor and Wheeler Exploring Black Holes (first edition)
Taylor and Wheeler Exploring Black Holes (second edition)

Additional Special Relativity Textbooks
Special Relativity properties from Minkowski diagrams
Doing Special Relativity

Additional General Relativity Textbooks
Ohanian
Carroll
Einstein
Cheng
D'Inverno
Dunsbury
Foster
Hartle
Lieber and Lieber
Ludvigsen
Ryder
Schutz
Stephani
Thorne
Woodhouse
Burke GR
Burke Applied Differential Geometry
Burke Div, Grad, Curl are Dead
Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler

Supplemental Reading

Hyperbolic Geometry
The First 150 Years of Hyperbolic Geometry
The Flavor of Hyperbolic Geometry
Visual Hyperbolic Geometry

Maxwell's Papers
Maxwell's 1861 Paper
Maxwell's 1864 Paper
Maxwell's 20 Equations

George Gamow's Vision
The Dream
The Lecture

Feynman on the Aharonov-Bohm Effect

From Faraday's Lines of Force to Maxwell's EM Fields 1
From Faraday's Lines of Force to Maxwell's EM Fields 2

Brehme Diagrams and Loedel Diagrams
Dirac's 1949 Paper that Introduces Light-Cone Coordinates

Dirac on Tensors
Light-Cone Coordinates

Applets

Applets Galore
Lorentz Applets

The SR videos are available from the Annenberg Foundation.
Go to this site and select the video you want to see.
The corresponding chapters in the Mechanical Universe text book are also available.
The Michelson-Morley Experiment
The Lorentz Transformation
Velocity and Time
Mass, Momentum, and Energy

2011 Lectures

Lecture 1: Electrodynamics
Lecture 2: The Lorentz Transformation, Velocity and Time, and Mass, Momentum and Energy
Lecture 3: Maxwell's Equations and The Michelson-Morley Experiment
Lecture 4: Maxwell's Equations
Lecture 5: Hyperbolic Geometry
Lecture 6: Hyperbolic Geometry, Trigonometry, and Calculus
Lecture 7: Metamaterials: Designer Materials for Light
Lecture 8: Evanescent Waves
Lecture 8b: Surface Plasmons
Lecture 9: How big is an electron?
Lecture 10: Classical Collisions
Lecture 11: Minkowski Diagrams in Momentum Space
Lecture 12: Electric Materials
Lecture 13: Magnetic Materials 1
Lecture 14: Magnetic Materials 2

Lecture 15: Prof. Edmund Bertschinger and Prof. Barton Zwiebach
Bertschinger: General Relativity
Zwiebach: Introduction to String Theory

Lecture 16: Prof. Alex Maloney and Prof. Kip Thorne
Lecture 17: Prof. Kip Thorne Lecture 4
Lecture 18: Prof. Kip Thorne Lecture 5
Kip Thorne: General Relativity
Kip Thorne: Gravitational Waves
Kip Thorne: Gravitational Waves Homework and Solutions

Lecture 19: Dirac, Stokes, and Bourbaki
Michael Spivak: Calculus on Manifolds
Michael Spivak: Differential Geometry Volume 1
Michael Spivak: Differential Geometry Volume 2
Michael Spivak: Differential Geometry Volume 3
Michael Spivak: Differential Geometry Volume 4
Michael Spivak: Differential Geometry Volume 5

Lecture 20: The Boundary of a Boundary is Zero
Flanders: Differential Forms with Applications to the Physical Sciences
Bachman: A Geometric Approach to Differential Forms
Warnick: Teaching Electromagnetic Field Theory Using Differential Forms
Deschamps: Electromagnetics and Differential Forms
Bossavit: The Geometry of Electromagnetism
Lindell: Differential Forms in Electromagnetics
Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler: Gravitation

2009 Lectures

Lecture 1
Lecture 2
Lecture 3
Lecture 5
Lecture 6a
Lecture 6b
Lecture 6c
Lecture 7
Lecture 8
Lecture 9
Lecture 10a
Lecture 10b
Lecture 11
Lecture 12
Lecture 13 Sean Carroll on GR 1
Lecture 14 Sean Carroll 2 on GR 2
Lecture 15 Sean Carroll on GR 3
Lectures 13-15 on Plastic
Lectures 13-15 on Paper 1
Lectures 13-15 on Paper 2
Lecture 15b Walter Lewin on Rayleigh Scattering
Lecture 15c Walter Lewin on Teaching Freshman Physics
Lecture 16 Alan Guth on Inflation
Lecture 17 Turner
Lecture 17 Kolb
Lecture 18 Gauss
Lecture 18 Loveridge
Lecture 18 Frank
Lecture 19 Baez
Lecture 19 Wheeler Chapter 7
Lecture 19 Wheeler 1
Lecture 19 Wheeler 2
Bourbaki 1
Bourbaki 2
The death of Bourbaki
Summer Reading

2007 Lectures

Lecture 1
Lecture 2
Lecture 3
Lecture 4
Lecture 5
Lecture 6
Lecture 7
Synchrotron Photos
Lecture 8
Lecture 9
Lecture 10
Lecture 11
Lecture 12
Auckland vs. Los Angeles
Lecture 13
Lecture 14
Lecture 15
Lecture 16a
Lecture 16b
Lecture 17a
Lecture 17b

Homework

SR Homework as a single deja vu file
or SR Homework as series of pdf files
Solve these problems, or just study the solutions.

E&M Homework
Study these problems.