Electricity & magnetism II: course materials

Principles of electricity and magnetism 2 (E&M II), is the second semester in our two-semester sequence of junior-level classical electromagnetism courses for physics majors. We have compiled a suite of clicker questions, in-class activities, homework problems & other assessments, covering a range of electrodynamics topics, including:

• Maxwell's time-dependent equations
• AC circuits
• Conservaton laws
• EM waves in vacuum and media
• Potentials and gauge transformations
• Radiation
• Special relativity

About the transformation:

We transformed this course using:

• Explicit learning goals
• Interactive lectures
• Transformed homework problems (including a "bank" of potential HW problems)
• Common student difficulties & in-class group activities
• Concept tests ("clicker" questions)
• Interactive tutorial worksheets

Course effectiveness was investigated through the following assessments:

• Traditional exams
• A new research-based conceptual assessment (the Colorado UppeR-division ElectrodyNamics Test(CURrENT).

Download course materials

• Download a zipped file containing all course materials except assessments and solutions. (see below) [65 MB]
• Don't know where to begin? We'd suggest starting off with the clicker questions...
  • Download just the clicker questions. [24 MB]
• Please email us at Steven.Pollock@colorado.edu to obtain a zip file of all course materials including assessments.

This package of course materials also contains implementation guides, an archive of several past E&M II courses at CU, and other supporting documents (e.g., explicit learning goals, relevant education research articles, and notes on common student difficulties). Source files are included (in PowerPoint and Word formats) in order to facilitate their adaptation and implementation at other institutions.

Instructors and education researchers are free to use and adapt these materials for non-commercial purposes, according to the creative commons license below. We ask for your cooperation in not making any solutions you may create for the homework (and exam problems, clicker questions, etc...) available on the open web, out of respect for instructors and students at other institutions, and for maintaining the integrity of our research.

Instructor's guide for "Best Practices in Clicker Use".

Other Resources

• PER at the University of Colorado with posters, talks and research papers on similar topics.
• OSU Paradigms Wiki site for other upper-division activities.

Are you using these materials?

• Please tell us about your use (or intended use!) of these materials in your course (It's a very quick survey!) 
  Your valuable feedback will help us understand where and how these materials are being used, and ways they might be improved.

Publications and posters

• See all publications related to this effort.
• "Research-based Course Materials and Assessments for Upper-Division Electrodynamics (E&M II)"
  Charles Baily, Michael Dubson and Steven J. Pollock
  PERC Proceedings 2012 (submitted).

Other resources

• Our materials on the AAPT Physical Science Resource Center
• Instructor manual of "Best Practices in Clicker Use"
• PER at University of Colorado with other posters, talks and research papers on similar topics
• OSU Paradigms Wiki site with similar upper-division activities

Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recomendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the national science foundation (NSF).