Re:Visual tour of classical electromagnetism
by curlcntr on Thursday January 18, 2018 @10:01AM
(#16177520)
Cool!
Nearly all my comments so far are about books but Jackson's Classical Electrodynamics provided a turning point in my understanding of E&M.... and took over a year (of pain) to get through.
On the other end of the 'spectrum', Griffiths Intro to Electrodynamics is extremely readable and just as good.
Re:Visual tour of classical electromagnetism
by tremendulo on Thursday January 18, 2018 @05:50AM
(#16176122)
One early misconception I had about EM was that there were discrete 'lines' of force. I guess this either arose from iron filings experiments or from the way the diagrams of fields are (perhaps unavoidably) drawn. But now I know the fields are continuous.
Re:Visual tour of classical electromagnetism
by Koshkin on Thursday January 18, 2018 @09:57AM
(#16177485)
To be fair, this is about classical electromagnetism.
What is annoying though, it is the pervasive practice according to which some authors completely ignore H ("intensity of the magnetic field") while others pretend to know nothing (and nor should their students) about B ("magnetic induction").
Somewhat less annoyingly, the teachers of electromagnetism rarely introduce the students to the formulation in terms of differential forms, which many consider a better, more intuitive way of doing electrodynamics compared to vector analysis (which student still should learn, of course).
Nearly all my comments so far are about books but Jackson's Classical Electrodynamics provided a turning point in my understanding of E&M.... and took over a year (of pain) to get through.
On the other end of the 'spectrum', Griffiths Intro to Electrodynamics is extremely readable and just as good.
Wait 'til you hear of quantum electrodynamics ;)
What is annoying though, it is the pervasive practice according to which some authors completely ignore H ("intensity of the magnetic field") while others pretend to know nothing (and nor should their students) about B ("magnetic induction").
Somewhat less annoyingly, the teachers of electromagnetism rarely introduce the students to the formulation in terms of differential forms, which many consider a better, more intuitive way of doing electrodynamics compared to vector analysis (which student still should learn, of course).
Has MIT changed that they now refer to courses by name AND number? Saying “Physics 8.02” is like saying “ATM Machine”
I maintain that this is fine, interpreted as "the machine with which we associate the name _ATM_".