Important Concepts
Chapters 1-5
Course Outcome from syllabus: Students will:
 Describe and analyze distributed systems such as transmission lines …
Chapter 1 Introduction: Waves and Phasors
What is the law of conservation of charge?
What is a static electric field?
What is a traveling wave? What are some of its characteristics?
What does the following equation describe? What do the parameters A, ω, t, β and x
denote? Rewrite the equation in terms of T and λ .
V(z,t) = A cos(ωt - βz)
Chapter 2 Transmission Lines
What is a transmission line?
What is the relationship among phase velocity, frequency, and wavelength? What
determines each?
Describe a transmission in terms of a lumped-element model. Define the elements. How
does the model relate to real transmission lines?
What is the characteristic impedance of a transmission line? What determines its value?
How is it described in terms of voltage and current?
What are the complex propagation constant, the attenuation constant and the phase
constant? How are they related to one another? What transmission line phenomena do
they help to describe?
What is the voltage reflection coefficient? How is it described in terms of incident and
reflected voltage waves and in terms of impedances? What is the current reflection
coefficient?
What does it mean that a load is matched to the line? What is the practical advantage of
such matching?
What is a standing wave? How is it created? Why are standing waves important? What is
the standing wave ratio? What is a desirable standing wave ratio? Why?
What is the input impedance of a transmission line? How is it defined in terms of voltage
and current? Compare the definition of input impedance to the definition of characteristic
impedance.
What is time average power? Why is it important?
What is a bounce diagram? For what is it used?
Chapter 3 Vector Analysis
Define/describe the following
Dot product
Cross product
Gradient of a scalar field
Divergence of a vector field
Curl of a vector field
Laplacian operator
Chapter 4 Electrostatics
Define/describe the following:
Charge density
Charge distribution
Current density
Coulomb’s law
Electric field
Permittivity
Flux density
Gauss’s law
Electric scalar potential
Laplace’s equation
Poisson’s equation
Dielectric polarization
Electric susceptibility
Relative permittivity
Chapter 5 Magnetostatics
Define/describe
Magnetic flux density
Magnetic force
Magnetic torque
Biot-Savart law
Gauss’s law for magnetism
Ampere’s circuital law