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Simfish
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How many grad programs in physics don't require Jackson's Electrodynamics? Which ones among them, in particular?
Vanadium 50 said:I'm afraid I agree with Nicksauce.
It is important as a physicist to learn how to do hard problems - problems that take hours and sometimes days. You get these in real life. Jackson is not a unique source of these problems, of course, but it's a very good source.
Simfish said:There are plenty of physics PhD students who really wish they didn't have to go through all that masochism (and believe that it didn't make them any better off).
Simfish said:It's not completely a deciding factor, but rather, something that I do take in consideration (especially since I'm deciding whether I should go only for astrophysics only or if I should include some physics as well).
There are plenty of physics PhD students who really wish they didn't have to go through all that masochism (and believe that it didn't make them any better off). Many of those who want to do condensed matter research (as opposed to theoretical physics) don't necessarily need to go through all that.
nicksauce said:As an Astronomy grad student, I'm expected to work 70-80 hours a week for the next 4-5 years.
If you can't go through the masochism of one measly E&M course, are you going to be able to go through the masochism of working essentially two full-time jobs for the next 5 years?
Jokerhelper said:Pardon my ignorance, but what exactly is "Jackson's Electrodynamics"? A book?
Pengwuino said:It's a fairly standard graduate level electrodynamics textbook by J.D. Jackson.
One thing about Jacksons' text that I like is the fact that it is nearly perfect as far as I can tell. After using it for a year, we were hard pressed to find actual errors in the text that weren't pointed out on the 1.5 page errata you can find online. Many of those errors were typos as well that you can naturally pick on as well. The bad thing with some texts is that you'll find errors and poorly worded problems missing information or poorly motivated arguments in the text. Not so with Jackson!
Of course, when you see things like "it can easily be shown" , it can mean 3 pages of derivations... but it is still showable!
nicksauce said:Don't want to sound like a dick, but if this is a deciding factor for you in choosing a grad school, you probably shouldn't go to grad school.
ZapperZ;2816054 Those "graduate students" that you got that poor advice from have no idea what will be facing them when they actually have to look for a job. Zz.[/QUOTE said:Or, they might be pretty mediocre physicists.
Jokerhelper said:Yeah I just looked it up on Amazon and was skimming through the first pages of the book. I was surprised that I was able to read through 1.1 of the book. I gave up by 1.2 tho.
Well to be honest I have only one year of undergrad under my belt, just saying. I tried reading through 1.3 but I got lost in the amount of equations with several symbols I don't really know the meaning of.anirudh215 said:Chapter 1 mostly deals with the things one learns in undergrad. Everyone should be able to 'read' through that. I put read in quotes because reading is different from comprehending. Certain parts require you to work out some, without which you cannot comprehend just by reading.
nicksauce said:As an Astronomy grad student, I'm expected to work 70-80 hours a week for the next 4-5 years.
eXorikos said:What's so special about this book? We used David Griffith's book Introduction to Electrodynamics.
eXorikos said:The whole book up to special relativity in one chapter? We covered the whole book in our second semester of the second year.
I forgot the grad part of the topic. :)
I've looked through the table of contents and I don't see many topics that aren't discussed in intro to electrodynamics by Griffiths. The only things that aren't in that book are according to my first reading:
10 Scattering and diffraction
12 Dynamics of particles
13 Collisions
15 Brehmstrahlung
ZapperZ said:In Griffiths, did you try to find the solution to the Poisson equation for a disk of charge off-axis, i.e. not along the symmetry axis? Or look at the waveguide problem being tackled. Is that anything similar to what you did in Griffiths? What about using Green's function with the appropriate Dirichlet or Neuman boundary conditions?
Yes, you MAY think you're solving an electrostatic problem that looked familiar, but LOOK AGAIN! All the simplified situations that you are accustomed to in undergraduate E&M are no longer adopted! As stated earlier, these are now closer to what you have to deal with in real life! In fact, if you go into accelerator physics, the first thing you'll find out is that, you NEED Jackson's book to survive!
Zz.
eXorikos said:Green's function with Dirichlet or Neuman boundary conditions we covered in Differential Equations. The rest we only did what's in Griffiths.
Like I said I only went through the table of contents. I never said I thought I could solve any problem. You're just assuming I feel superior or something judging by the "tone" you take against me. I know perfectly well I'm just a student in his 3rd bachelor year.
Actually we only have 2 E&M classes in our whole curriculum. The last one being the one where we use Griffiths. We also have only 4 fields where we can graduate in: theoretical, nuclear, solid state, soft matter. And I have a feeling we'll do pretty well even if we haven't used Jackson's book.
ZapperZ said:The Jackson text is very seldom used (I haven't seen any) at the undergraduate level.
ZapperZ said:Er... which part of "... That is an undergraduate E&M text. We are talking about graduate level E&M... " did you miss? The Jackson text is very seldom used (I haven't seen any) at the undergraduate level. No one here is insisting that you use Jackson's text at the undergraduate level. That isn't the point of the OP.
Note that it was you who made the argument that you ".. don't see many topics that aren't discussed in intro to electrodynamics by Griffiths.. ". I countered that faulty impression by stressing the differences that you didn't realized to correct that view. The topics MAY be the same. The content isn't. It is a faulty impression to think that just because you've solve for the field along the axis of symmetry of some situation, that you can solve for the field everywhere else. In other words, I gave specific examples. It wasn't a "tone".
Zz.
eXorikos said:I clearly stated in my second reply that I read over the graduate part of the topic. So in my first reply I wasn't aware of that. You and many other stated that you need Jackson's text in your grad years. I'm assuming that is like your masters here in Europe? I know no university program here in Belgium that has an E&M course in the master of physics. So by the standards set here in this topic, we aren't real physicists when we graduate? Maybe I'm totally wrong about comparing the system undergrad/grad with our system.
cristo said:This question is somewhat offtopic, but is this really true: are you actually expected to work 70-80 hours a week? I'm a grad student across the pond, and it's hard to think of a week where I work more than about 50 hours (and I'm not just being lazy.. that's pretty much standard for all the students I know!)
A professor from a university in Canada that did his undergraduate degree in the UK (BSc) told me that the material they covered there was roughly on par with what's covered (at least in first year) when doing a Masters in Canada. Presumably, the same applies for the US, as well.Pengwuino said:The two systems are different as far as I've read on this forums. The exact details I don't remember.