Welcome to the FYS1120 course, where we will guide you through the main topics of electromagnetism. To prepare you for the coming weeks, we’re starting out building your tool box with most of the mathematical background you’ll need in this course. Every week we’re posting a post like this with exercises and some information about this week’s topics.

This course also includes a fair amount of computational physics. We didn’t want to burden you with too much programming, so most of the hard work is done already, but there are still a few things you will probably need help to set up before you can get started. We have chosen to use IPython Notebook as a core tool this year, so you will also need to learn how to install and use this. Therefore, we’ve written a note on how to install IPython Notebook and a note on how to use it:

• Installing IPython Notebook
• Get started with IPython Notebook

The numerical exercises will be given as IPython Notebooks. You will typically find a link with a preview of the notebook, with description of the problem, in addition to a zip file containing a IPython Notebook file (.ipynb), which you’ll need to perform numerical and visualization exercises.

Knowledge about vectors and vector fields are important in the study of electromagnetism, as well as knowing how to analyze them. We’ll encounter concepts such as flux, divergence and curl which might not be familiar to all of you, but are essential to our exploration of electromagnetic phenomena. Three notes have been written as an introduction to these concepts and to prepare you for this week’s problem set:

• Note 1 – Essentials of Vector Calculus
• Note 2 – Flux and Divergence
• Note 3 – Line integrals and Curl

The problem set  is found here:

• Mathematical warm-up
• Mathematical warm-up (with answers)

The notebook for this week is found here

• Notebook (preview)
  
• Notebook

We will also post exercises for week 1 this week, so it is very important that you start on the mathematical warm-up set, as soon as possible.

If you wonder about anything regarding the notes or this week’s exercises, do not hesitate to ask! We’ll gladly help you out. Good luck!