All the Wrong Fuses and Splices

March 7, 2012

There are a few different conventions for electromagnetism, and keeping them straight can be a headache.

Here I collect the differences between the particle physics convention

and the… other convention

The particle physics convention is the same as SI if you replace , , and , so you can use any result in e.g. Griffiths easily.

 
Units   “Particle Physics” “Gaussian”
    “Rationalized”  
Lagrangian Density
Hamiltonian Density
Maxwell’s Equations
Fine Structure Constant
Flux quantum
Coulomb’s Law
Biot-Savart Law

You can see it’s just a matter of keeping track of where the goes, which is what makes it so tough to remember.

March 7, 2012

All the Wrong Fuses and Splices - March 7, 2012 - {"name"=>"Evan Berkowitz", "twitter"=>"evanberkowitz", "email"=>"evan@evanberkowitz.com", "phone"=>"+1 917-692-5685", "inspire"=>"https://inspirehep.net/authors/1078474", "arxiv"=>"http://arxiv.org/a/berkowitz_e_1", "github"=>"http://github.com/evanberkowitz", "linkedin"=>"https://www.linkedin.com/in/evanberkowitz", "google_scholar"=>"https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=hEy9k60AAAAJ", "orcid"=>"http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1082-1374", "research_gate"=>"https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Evan_Berkowitz"}