PHYS 7590's Outline; Winter 2025

Course Outline for PHYS 7590; Winter 2025

Course Information: www.physics.umanitoba.ca/~khodr/PHYS7590-W25. All important information pertaining to the course, including a link to the assigned homework problems and their solutions, will be posted on that page.
Professor: Khodr Shamseddine.
Email: khodr.shamseddine@umanitoba.ca
Office: 207 Allen Building, phone 474-6207.
Lecture Time and Place: MWF 11:30 am- 12:20 pm in 375 University College.
Consultation Times: Monday and Thursday 2:00-3:00 pm, or by appointment (to set up such an appointment, email me or talk to me after the lecture.)

Textbook: The textbook for the course is Jackson, J. D., Classical Electrodynamics, (New York: Wiley, 1999) 3rd edition.
Topics: We will cover selective material from Chapters 1-7 and 11 of the book. Topics will include: electrostatics, boundary-value problems and Green’s functions; magnetostatics; Maxwell’s equations and conservation laws; the wave equation and propagation of waves; special theory of relativity. The following is a tentative schedule for the course:

Week	Topics	Readings
1	Electrostatics: Poisson and Laplace equations, Green’s theorem	Chapter 1, Jackson
2-4	Boundary value problems I	Chapter 2, Jackson
4-6	Boundary value problems II, spherical coordinates	Chapter 3, Jackson
7-8	Electric field in macroscopic media, Magnetostatics, Faraday’s Law	Sections 4.3, 4.4, 5.1-5.4, 5.8, 5.9 and 5.15, Jackson
8	Maxwell’s equations, the wave equation, conservation laws	Chapter 6, Jackson
9	Plane electromagnetic waves and wave propagation	Chapters 7, Jackson
10-12	Special theory of relativity	Chapter 11, Jackson- notes to be provided

Homework Assignments: There will be a problem set assigned every other week (posted on www.physics.umanitoba.ca/~khodr/PHYS7590-W25/homework.html) and due two weeks later. You will receive the assignments also via the online grading system Crowdmark and you will have to submit the solutions on Crowdmark too; to learn how to do that, please click on this link https://crowdmark.com/help/completing-and-submitting-an-assignment/. These assignments will be due at 11:59 pm on the due date. Since uploading the solutions may take some time, please do not wait till the last minute to submit your solutions. Late assignments will not be accepted; so please hand in what you have by the due date.
Final Exam: The final exam will be two parts:

Part I: will be in-person and will be open book and open notes. It will be 3 hours in length; the exact date and time of the exam (in April) will be announced later in class and on www.physics.umanitoba.ca/~khodr/PHYS7590-W25.
Part II: will be take-home.

Then the letter grades will be assigned based on the following chart.

Please read this Appendix For Winter 2025 Course Syllabi which was prepared by the Faculty of Science and includes useful information and resources for the students.