Electricity, Magnetism and Electromagnetism

Physics in 17 chapters — from “Electric charge, Coulomb's law and the electric field” to “Plane electromagnetic waves: polarisation, energy flux and radiation pressure”.

Chapters

  1. Electric charge, Coulomb's law and the electric field
    • Charge, its conservation and Coulomb's law
    • The electric field as a property of space
    • Field lines and what they show
    • Fields of continuous charge distributions
    • The electric dipole in a field
    • Problems
  2. Electric flux and Gauss's law
    • Scalar product and electric flux
    • Gauss's law from the inverse square
    • The symmetry argument
    • Field of a spherical shell
    • Fields of a line and a plane
    • Problems
  3. Electrostatic potential, potential energy and the energy of the field
    • Line integral and conservative field
    • Electrostatic potential and potential difference
    • Partial derivatives and the gradient
    • Electrostatic potential energy
    • Electric field energy density
    • Problems
  4. Conductors, screening and capacitance
    • Electrostatic equilibrium of a conductor
    • Induced charge and screening
    • Capacitance as a geometric quantity
    • Energy of a charged capacitor
    • Electrostatic pressure on a conductor
    • Problems
  5. Dielectrics: polarisation, bound charge and the displacement field
    • Induced dipole and polarisability
    • Polarisation
    • Bound charge
    • The field of a uniformly polarised slab
    • Electric displacement
    • Linear dielectrics, susceptibility and permittivity
    • Energy and force with a dielectric
    • Problems
  6. Current, current density, conductivity and Ohm's law
    • Current density and drift velocity
    • Conservation of charge, integral form
    • Ohm's law at a point
    • Resistance, resistivity and Joule heating
    • Electromotive force and surface charge
    • Problems
  7. The Biot-Savart law and the fields of steady currents
    • Vector product and magnetic force
    • The Biot-Savart law
    • Field of a straight wire
    • Current loop and magnetic dipole moment
    • Field on the axis of a solenoid
    • Problems
  8. Ampère's law, magnetic flux and the shape of the magnetic field
    • Circulation round a wire
    • Ampère's law
    • Ampèrian loops for symmetric currents
    • Magnetic flux and Gauss's law for magnetism
    • Field shape from flux and circulation
    • Problems
  9. Divergence, curl and the local form of the field laws
    • The divergence
    • The divergence theorem
    • Gauss's law at a point
    • The curl
    • Stokes's theorem
    • Curl of the static fields
    • Continuity equation at a point
    • Problems
  10. Magnetisation, bound currents and the auxiliary field H
    • Atomic magnetic moments and magnetisation
    • Bound currents in a magnetised body
    • The field of a uniformly magnetised cylinder
    • The auxiliary field and free current
    • Linear magnetic media and permeability
    • The auxiliary field inside a bar magnet
    • Problems
  11. Faraday's law, motional emf and Lenz's law
    • Motional emf in a moving rod
    • Faraday's law for a still circuit
    • Lenz's law and eddy currents
    • The induced electric field
    • The generator's sinusoidal emf
    • Problems
  12. Self and mutual inductance and magnetic field energy
    • Mutual inductance
    • Self-inductance and back emf
    • Energy stored in an inductor
    • Magnetic field energy density
    • Coaxial cable inductance and capacitance
    • Problems
  13. Transients: RC, RL and LC circuits
    • Charging and discharging a capacitor
    • Switching an inductor on and off
    • Energy exchange in LC oscillation
    • Damped oscillation in an RLC circuit
    • Problems
  14. Alternating current: peak and rms values, the oscilloscope and rectification
    • Sinusoidal alternating current
    • Mean power and the root-mean-square value
    • Reading the oscilloscope trace
    • Rectification with an ideal diode
    • Smoothing and ripple
    • Problems
  15. AC circuits: phasors, complex impedance, resonance and power
    • Complex numbers and the phasor
    • Reactance of a capacitor and an inductor
    • Complex impedance and the rules for combining it
    • Series RLC circuit response
    • Resonance and quality factor
    • Power in AC circuits and the power factor
    • Passive filters and the loudspeaker crossover
    • Problems
  16. Displacement current, Maxwell's equations and boundary conditions
    • The failure of Ampère's law for changing fields
    • The displacement current
    • The Ampère-Maxwell law
    • Maxwell's equations, together
    • Maxwell's equations in matter
    • Electromagnetic boundary conditions
    • The coupling of changing fields
    • Problems
  17. Plane electromagnetic waves: polarisation, energy flux and radiation pressure
    • The wave equation from Maxwell's equations
    • The speed of the wave
    • The plane wave
    • Polarisation of an electromagnetic wave
    • Energy flux and the Poynting vector
    • Radiation pressure
    • The electromagnetic spectrum
    • Problems