Physics 1051:
General Physics II: Oscillations, Waves, Electromagnetism
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LECTURE NOTES: The act of compiling a complete set of notes, including the drawing of diagrams, contributes significantly to your ability to organize and recall important information. An archive of lecture notes, organized by topic, is provided to help you to fill in gaps and review complex diagrams presented in class. The most effective way for you to use the lectures and archived notes is to write down an outline of the main ideas and important points during the lecture and then to fill in the details of the outline, as soon as possible afterwards, by using the archived notes to refresh your memory of what was done in class. By doing this, you effectively review each lecture and reinforce important concepts while your recollection of the presentation is fresh and you generate a set of notes that will be of optimal use to you as study tools. Simply reading through the archived notes, without actively generating your own, is likely to be MUCH LESS EFFECTIVE as a learning strategy.

Attendance in class is an important determinant of success in this course and will be expected. You cannot hope to pass this course simply by reading posted notes posted and by manipulating formulae provided with tests or exams. You will find that success depends on developing some intuition/physical understanding of the wave and field phenomena encountered in this course. The ways in which we apply mathematical descriptions of phenomena generally depend on having some underlying picture of the relevant symmetry or causal relationships. A large part of my effort in class will be directed toward helping you develop an ability to see beyond the formulae describing the phenomena we cover. My experience is that students who try to rely only on the posted notes without benefit of the classroom discussion, particularly about how different concepts relate and about the way in which the mathematical models represent real phenomena, tend to get lost in the details. This is reflected in their relative success in the course.

Lectures by topic and section in Serway and Jewett

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