This course introduces methods for using computers to model the behavior of physical systems. Students will learn how computers represent numbers, limits of computation, how to write computer programs, and to use good programming practices. Students will also apply numerical methods of differentiation and integration, and numerical solutions to differential equations in physical situations.

This seminar will assist students in their preparation for the Physics Comprehensive Oral Exam (CORE) required at the end of the course by presenting a unified as opposed to topical approach to physics. Physics majors must pass this course before going on to 300-level Physics courses.

This course is a systematic treatment of electrostatics and magnetostatics, charges, currents, fields and potentials, dielectrics and magnetic materials, Maxwell's equations and electromagnetic waves. Mathematical formalism using differential and integral vector calculus is developed. Field theory is treated in terms of scalar and vector potentials. Special techniques for solution to Laplace's equation as a boundary value problem are covered. Wave solutions of Maxwell's equations, and the behavior of electromagnetic waves at interfaces, are discussed.