Introductory Physics II

This book of lectures on introductory electromagnetism emphasizes the similarities between electric and magnetic phenomena. Most courses first spend weeks explaining the details of electric phenomena before turning the students' attention to magnetism. Using this approach, students often miss the close similarities between these two sectors of electromagnetism. Any overall theory is not complete unless it takes both into consideration. These lectures begin the discussion of electromagnetism with the electrostatic interaction, namely the force from a stationary distribution of charges on a test charge. They then consider the case of charges in motion. Stationary charges produce an electric field that exerts forces on other charges. For moving charges, one must not only account for forces due to their electric field, but is compelled to consider forces resulting from their magnetic field as well. To make the argument, the book invokes Special Relativity. Hence, the first three chapters consist of an overview of Special Relativity with modern applications. At the end of a course, the number of topics that students must comprehend often seems overwhelming. To make matters worse, the topics are embedded within hundreds of pages of narrative and examples, thus sometimes making it difficult to know what is most crucial to understand. For these reasons, this book includes an extended lecture that contains those concepts that are most important for students to comprehend. Essentially, this constitutes an abridged version of the full course and is highly recommended to students studying for final examinations. Finally, over the past several decades, a new genre of scientific instrument has burst upon the world stage called the synchrotron light source. An offshoot of that device is the modern generation of free-electron lasers. Both instruments provide electromagnetic waves of brightness orders of magnitude greater than those from conventional sources. They are revolutionizing a myriad of disciplines, including biology, chemistry, cultural heritage studies, engineering, geology, materials science, nanotechnology, palaeontology, pharmaceutical discoveries, and physics. Therefore, this book concludes with a lecture that contains descriptions and applications of these new sources of electromagnetic waves.