Home Page for Physics 1120

Physics 1120, General Physics 2: Electricity, Magnetism, and Optics

Instructors: Victor Gurarie and Steven Pollock

Lightning is one of nature's most spectacular demonstrations of high voltage, and resulting dielectric breakdown. It can also be deadly. A stroke might last only about 30 microseconds, but with a peak power of over a trillion watts. Boulder County is struck by lightning about 3,500 times/year. There are still many technical details about lightning that are not completely understood, it's an active field of research.

Week 4 Highlights: Starting Electric Potential

First Midterm is this week, Tues Sept 18, 7:30-9:00 pm. See below.

Reading: Chapter 29, Ch.30, Sec.1,2 [Skip Ch.28 till later.]

Special notes:

Steve's exam review time and place will be in room G125 Mon 6:00-6:50 PM. Nothing planned or formal, just an extra office hour, basically, for you to ask questions if you want.
Midterm #1 is Tuesday Sept. 18, 7:30–9:15 pm. See exam page for more information.
"Virtual office hours" is where I post email questions, if I think they're of general interest.
We also have an 1120 CULink page . We'll post your grades there soon. There is also a "threaded messages" list - you are welcome to ask each other questions about the course, even the homework there, and respond to one another. I will monitor this occasionally, please use good judgement and common sense. If anyone uses this to copy answers, tell formulas, or otherwise sabotage the learning goals of the course, we'll just turn it off. But it's great for you to ask questions, ask for help, discuss the problems, give hints, talk about where you went to get help or how you figured something out, and so on. Use it as a resource to collaborate. When in doubt about how far you can go in "giving help" to other students' questions: if you feel comfortable knowing that I'll be reading it, then it's probably fine!
The "Many useful links" (near the bottom) contains relevant Java applets. (Also a video of a grape in a microwave) Check it out.
In case you were wondering, I will be dropping your lowest CAPA score of the semester, and one pretest, and one Tutorial homework... basically one of everything (except a midterm!)

Home page from weeks 1, 2, 3

I welcome your comments on the class and this website. Send them to victor.gurarie@colorado.edu
(Many thanks to John Price for the original construction of this page!)