Solutions for assignments and exams (password required)

Lecture summaries

Handouts:
Mathematica keyboard shortcuts & physical constants

Historical Notes, demonstrator applets, songs, etc.

Math Appendices -- Helpful mathematical material collected by Haverford and Bryn Mawr Physics majors some years ago, edited by Lyle Roelofs.	Charles Coulomb biography 1736-1806
A keen Coulomb force demonstrator! See if you can get the electron into a stable orbit! Note that you can add several electrons, but the applet does not include the effects of the forces between them, only the force between each electron and the proton. I suggest you click on the "Show Forces" button for the best effect. Finally, if the electron gets too close to the positive charge, the simulation doesn't run correctly -- try it and see what happens!	A nice three-dimensional electric fields applet The top pull-down menu allows you to pick a charge distribution (I suggest you choose one of the first five), then choose "Display: Field Vectors" or "Display: Field Lines" from the next pull-down menu. Then click and drag with your mouse on the image to make it rotate. If you let go of the mouse button while you're still moving the mouse, you can start the thing spinning, which looks pretty nice. (The animations work best if you leave the applet window at the size it appears originally, rather than maximizing it.)
Here's a nifty two-dimensional electric fields and voltage applet. Use the slider bar to determine the strength and polarity of a charge, then click to place it. For me, the "Go" feature doesn't work well, since I can't see the charges while they're moving. But, the displays of the field configurations and equipotentials are pretty neat. Red equipotentials correspond to positive voltages (relative to the voltage infinitely far away) and blue to negative voltages.	Carl Friederich Gauss biography Note: Gauss did so much, especially in math, that you will not find his law explictly mentioned here! Instead, it is referred to as the "law of quadratic reciprocity". He originally derived it as a purely mathematical result for functions that fall off as 1/r^2, and then it was applied to the electric field. Gauss in 1803
Gauss's Law Song	An Ode to Capacitors

Background image: A rare triple lightning strike (this is not a multiple exposure), taken on the great plains by Dr. Steven Horsburgh.