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PHYS212

PHYS212 (University Physics: Electricity and Magnetism) is a 4-credit hour course that is required for ECE majors as a part of the Foundational Mathematics and Science requirement. It is also required for most other engineering majors, including Computer Science majors. It is offered in the fall, spring, and summer semesters.

Content Covered

  • Coulomb’s Law, Electrostatics, Electric Field
  • Electric Flux, Gauss’s Law, Electric Potential
  • Capacitors and Capacitance
  • Current and DC Circuit Analysis, KVL, KCL, Ohm’s Law
  • RC Circuits
  • Magnetic Force and Field, Biot-Savart and Ampere’s Law
  • Magnetic Induction, Faraday’s Law, Motional EMF
  • Inductors and RL Circuits
  • LC and LRC Circuits, Harmonic Oscillation, Phasors
  • AC Circuits, Resonance, Power, Transformers
  • Maxwell’s Equations, Electromagnetic Waves
  • Polarization, Intensity, Geometric Optics

PHYS212 is a solid foundational course in many concepts absolutely essential for any ECE major. Concepts such as DC circuit analysis, phasors, resonance and power, and basic electromagnetism provide an excellent conceptual base for ECE majors to understand topics in courses such as ECE110, ECE210, ECE330, and ECE329.

Prerequisites

The official prerequisite for PHYS212 is PHYS211, which provides the basic background of calculus-based physics, such as kinematics, statics, dynamics, work, and energy, which are used extensively in PHYS212. MATH241 goes over vector calculus, which really helps with understanding concepts such as field and flux.

When to Take It

ECE majors typically take PHYS212 in their freshman year, most commonly in spring after doing PHYS211 in the fall. It is a course that is quite helpful for ECE110 and ECE210 if the student understands the concepts properly. This is especially true for ECE210, as PHYS212 is an important prerequisite. The student will then find that it provides a nice scientific basis and intuition for a lot of ideas in ECE110 and ECE210 that are merely presented axiomatically as equations to be used in circuit analysis.

Course Structure

PHYS212 holds 2 50-minute lectures per week, with prelectures and checkpoints to complete before each lecture. Attendance is graded at lectures via the iClicker platform. Nearly all of the material is covered in the prelectures, albeit in a more concise and summarized manner. Lectures thus provide an excellent opportunity to ask questions and practice concepts via interactive iClicker questions. Homework is assigned after each lecture in smartPhysics, which does cost money. The homework for each week's lectures are typically due at the same time early during the following week. There is a weekly 2-hour discussion that involves solving a problem set and taking a short quiz on the previous week’s material. There are 2 midterm exams and 1 final exam, all taken through Prarielearn at the CBTF. There are weekly labs that are each 2 hours long, where you use the IOLab and its E&M kit (that you need to purchase for yourself) to complete laboratory exercises and submit a report with your group at the end of every class. Teamwork is heavily emphasized in the PHYS 212 Lab.

Instructors

In the past, this course has been taught by Professors Mahmood and Kuo.

Course Tips

This course at times can get a little abstract compared to PHYS211. A good strategy is to try one’s best to get an intuitive grasp of such concepts in a non-visual way (the author’s high school physics teacher used to think of electric potential energy as how angry electrons are in a particular area, among other such analogies). Make sure to take detailed notes and work out problems done in the lecture. Also, definitely make sure to understand every homework problem, as they do a great job of testing conceptual understanding and problem-solving creativity. The discussion quizzes are fairly easy, don’t worry too much about them. Just remember to participate and attend everything, as all course meetings (lecture, lab, attendance) have graded attendance. In terms of math knowledge, most mathematics knowledge beyond the very basic ideas of differentiation and integration are merely presented in derivations of equations and never used in actual computation.

Life After

The following course in the PHYS sequence is PHYS214. This course, as mentioned before, helps a lot in understanding concepts in electronics and electromagnetism courses such as ECE110, ECE210, and ECE330. The core of the ECE210 curriculum pretty much builds off of the LRC circuits unit of PHYS212, where the basic ideas of phasors, periodic input signals, and circuit response are introduced, albeit without complex numbers. Particularly, however, ECE329 and ECE350, require a strong foundation in much of the core material in PHYS212 such as electrostatics, capacitors, electromagnetic fields, and Maxwell's equations, as these courses will build on those ideas in greater rigor.

Infamous Topics

  • LRC Circuits and Phasors: probably a totally new idea for most students. Practice drawing the diagram correctly and get comfortable with vector addition.
  • Magnetic forces and torques: can involve some complicated spatial visualization. Review statics and rotational motion from 211.

Resources

  • https://dynalist.io/d/ZSNTfJjkttO2-81xaZhSMMM2 A solid cheat-sheat for equations, good for exams.
  • Rewatch the prelectures as needed.