[PIANO PLAYING]
JASON H. HAFNER: What?
You want to take
"Electricity and Magnetism?"
Why?
It's 150 years old.
It's not changing the world like
computer science or bioengineering.
Plus it's only an approximate
description of the world.
It does a terrible job of explaining
things at the atomic scale.
Inside of an atom-- why would that
nucleus with all those charged protons
want to stay together?
That thing would fly apart.
Why does that electron just
keep going around the atom?
So electricity and magnetism gets a
lot of things wrong and is really old.
I really wouldn't bother.
[PIANO PLAYING]
Now wait a minute.
But it does do a really
good job of explaining
things in our macroscopic
world-- large things
like power plants or our
electrical distribution.
All of our electrical power, of course,
is based on electricity and magnetism.
Motors, that convert that
electrical power back into motion,
are based on electricity and magnetism.
It's behind other sciences
like chemistry and biology.
Every time you move your muscles,
that's due to an electrical impulse
in your cell membrane.
And light-- don't forget about light.
Light is an electromagnetic wave.
It's a sinusoidal vibration of the
electric field and the magnetic field
traveling at the speed of light.
So electricity and magnetism
actually explains a lot of things.
It explains refrigerator magnets,
and lasers, and electrical circuits,
and computers, and compasses.
Oh, and then remember in Star Wars?
Remember the double subset of Tatooine?
Remember the low sun was kind of red
and the higher sun was kind of yellow?
It explains that.
So yeah, maybe it is important to take
a class in electricity and magnetism.
I tell you what I'll do.
I'll put Rice Physics
102 online just for you.
There may be a few other
thousand people involved.
But just like the right students,
you'll be able to see the lectures,
and watch the demonstrations,
and do the homework.
There'll be camaraderie.
There'll be danger, and maybe
even a little bit of humor.
[CRICKETS CHIRPING]
Now, it's not going to be easy.
This course will be your
introduction to field theory,
and field theory requires three things.
It requires vectors.
It requires calculus.
And it requires their unholy
union-- vector calculus.
Now don't worry.
You don't need to know vector
calculus ahead of time.
We'll be taking basic
ideas from vector calculus.
So I'm officially excited.
Click the Register button.
And I will see you in the fall.
[PIANO PLAYING]
