The students should develop a feel for the magnetic field produced by line currents
They should be able to put thumb along current and curl fingers in direction of field to determine what the field of one part of wire looks like to another part of the wire
Given B of one part of the wire at another part of the wire, they should be able to think through (using the right-hand rule) the direction of the force on the wire due to that field
Tipler 29-33
Same as above, but now they get quantitative
Look for students to see the symmetry argument that eliminates transverse components of the field from the two bottom wires
Student should be getting used to working with infinite wires … force/unit length
Tipler 29-46
Students should come out of this problem with a basic understanding of how to apply Ampere's Law
This is quite similar to something we did in class