01
Charge, Coulomb's law, and the field concept
Is the field a bookkeeping device or a real thing?
CourseFree
8.02 Physics II — Electricity and Magnetism ↗MIT OCW
Lewin's E&M course, with the famous demonstrations.
Classical · Module 06
Electricity & Magnetism I — The Field
Faraday's great conceptual gift: stop thinking about action at a distance and start thinking about a condition of space itself. Everything after depends on taking the field seriously.
By the end of this module
You can compute fields from charge distributions and see why symmetry is the physicist's shortcut.
0%0 / 5 complete
02
Gauss's law and the power of symmetry
How can I find a field without ever doing an integral?
03
Electric potential and energy
Why is a scalar easier to work with than a vector, and what do I give up?
04
Conductors, capacitors, dielectrics
Why is the field inside a conductor always zero?
Check yourself
End-of-module quiz
Every answer comes with the reasoning, not just a verdict. Getting one wrong and reading why is the point.
01Gauss's law lets you compute a field easily only when:
02The electric field inside a solid conductor in electrostatic equilibrium is zero because:
03Doubling the separation of a parallel-plate capacitor at fixed charge does what to the stored energy?
Answer all 3 to finish the module.