(You call that a capacitor? Now THIS is a capacitor!) A commercially available capacitor: 2.7 volts, 3000 Farads. Making "ultracapacitors" like this requires going beyond just a simple old-fashioned "thin film dielectric" like we're talking about in class this week ... Using the formula
C = "eps_r * epsilon0 A/d, even with d as small as 1 nm (how much closer could 2 plates ever get?) and a rather spectacular dielectric constant of, say, 100, you'd still need to squeeze an effective plate area of far more than a football field, all rolled up to fit into this little battery-sized container!)

Week 9 (Mar 10-Mar 14):

We're covering the rest of Chapter 4 this week, studying electric fields in matter - "dielectrics".

Special notes:

• I just wanted to share that the (graduate) grader is very impressed with your work on the last hw set (#7 - what he calls "this horrible topic on expansions") I am impressed with your work too (even though I'm not convinced the topic is really so horrible :-)
• 2nd midterm coming up (Tues evening Mar 18) See "exams" link for specific information.
• 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". (NOTE: These are temporarily cancelled - there won't be one Friday before the exam, and there won't be one Friday before spring break! If people are interested let me and/or Darren know, we can start this up again *after* the break)
  
  
• Reading: Finishing up 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 , 7, 8