Joseph Fourier , Adrien Legendre, and Simeon-Denies Poisson - all mathematicians (Fourier was a physicist too. His work was on heat flow- Wikipedia gives him credit for "discovering" the greenhouse effect, among other things- but obviouly his work turned out to have many other applications too!) These three all worked around the turn of the 19th century, roughly the same era that the early theories of static electromagnetism (the subject of much of this semester) was being developed. Maxwell's unifying work wasn't till the middle of the 1800's. Up through (and beyond) the early 1800's there was almost complete (and explicit) exclusion of women from higher education (in Europe and the US), hence the unfortunate and rather outrageous gender bias in this cast of characters...

I get these pictures at the Dibner Portrait site.

Week 8 (Mar 3-Mar 7):

Starting Chapter 4 this week, moving our study of dipoles (by themselves) into matter - what about the E field created by large collections of dipoles that make up ordinary material? This is the physics of "dielectrics", the intermediate (and much more ubiquitous) compromise between conductors and vacuum!

Special notes:

• Check out these links for simulations to show vector fields in 2D and 3D and another (emstatic) in 2D.
• OFFICE HOURS:
  Mon 4 PM, in the Tutorial bay in the basement (with Stephanie Chasteen)
  Tues (3:30-5 PM, 11th floor)
  Friday, 4 PM, (in a Tutorial bay in the basement), Darren Tarshis runs his "3310 Tutorial".
  
  
• Reading: Chapter 4 this week
• Written Homework: Always due Wed at the start of class - see the assignments link (always available on the upper left).

I welcome your comments on the class and this website. Send them to steven.pollock at colorado.edu
(Thanks to Prof. Chuck Rogers for many of our home page image ideas!)
Old home pages this term: Week 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6