Electromagnetism, Fall 2016

Instructor: Yih-Yuh Chen

Assignment 1

The due date for this assignment is 12 pm Wednesday, October 19, 2016.

1. (10 points) Griths Problem 1.17 (p 18).

2. (30 points) In the class we said that

= + +

in standard Euclidean coordinates. But in spherical coordinates ( ) we have in-
stead

= + +
sin
(You might wish to use a set of rectangular coordinates (0 0 0 ) locally coincident
with the ( ) coordinates at a given point to see why the above is a reasonable
definition for the -operator.)

(a) (21 points) Please compute
, ,

, , , and . (Note: You are

strongly encouraged to use geometrical argument to quickly get the answers in-
stead of a brute force approach which typically involves expressing everything in
terms of Cartesian coordinates.)
(b) (9 points) If we write + + then


= + + ( + + )
sin

Remembering that all the s must dierentiate everything to its right, whether
it be a scalar or a vector, please compute in spherical coordinates.

3. (10 points) In the class we showed that, in the case of cylindrical coordinates, the
expression
1 ( ) 1
= + +

can be quickly arrived by considering the net flux of across a small natural volume
element tailored specifically to the cylindrical coordinates. Please use the same idea
to compute in spherical coordinates ( ):
1 (2 ) 1 (sin ) 1
= 2 + +
sin sin

1
 using the volume element of the figure below.

4. (10 points) Consider the vector field

=

in cylindrical coordinates. This can be a good approximation for some water flow
problems. We will avoid the singularity at the origin ( = 0) for this problem.

(a) Please give a schematic plot of this vector field.

(b) Please show that = 0.
(c) Please compute .