Stratton Electromagnetic Theory Chapter 1 and 2 problem solutions missing?

[Teclis]

Why are there no problems at the end of chapters one and two in Stratton Electromagnetic theory like there are at the end of all the other chapters??

 

[Simon Bridge]

Most likely reason: The author didn't write any.

 

[Teclis]

The book is over 70 years old and is considered a classic. In all that time no one has created problem sets for the material in those chapters?

 

[Simon Bridge]

It is certain that many people have - the book predates the internet so it is unlikely you will find any online.
But you didn't ask about that in your first post -

You asked why there were no problems at the end of the first two chapters and the reason is very simple: the author did not feel the need to include any.
There are many reasons why an author may choose to include or exclude material from a work, if you are lucky they will tell you their reasoning in the preamble to the work.

What other people choose to do or not do is another matter.

Lessee ... this the work in question?
https://archive.org/stream/electromagnetict031016mbp#page/n11/mode/2up

Skimming:
Ch1 is a crash course in field equations, and ch2 covers stress energy in a general way and you coulod probably skip it almost completyely ... I suspect the author felt these were preparatory to the main material, which starts in ch3 with the electric field. From experience with the way old texts used to be written, students facing Stratton's course would have already covered the maths of the first chapter in more detail in a mathematics course taken earlier or concurrently. This is a college text - looks like a senior text - and these things used to be written with a specific style of course in mind: the one taught by the author.

Reading the preface: bears out the above impression -
Stratton expects students to have complete (an presumably passed) introductory and intermediate courses is electronic theory - including thermionics incidentally, which would not be covered in a modern course - up to and including Maxwell's equations. He describes the first two chapters as "general" and "a discussion", he writes that the second chapter can be omitted almost completely on the first reading. Basically, he views them as a mixture reference and crash course/refresher - you read the book and flip back to these chapters when you hit a bit of maths you don't quite get. You should be familiar with the material in the first chapter but you don't need to learn it: the "exercizes" you seek are in the other chapters, where the material in the first two are given context.

 

[deskswirl]

Just out of interest. Why Stratton?

I mean the only people I know who use Stratton are researchers (myself included) who need a few details omitted from later books. But it is even rare for me to pull my copy off of the shelf. There are more modern books that cover essentially the same material without the headache to decipher what Stratton is taking about... Seriously you ought to read the section where he introduces Laplace Transforms :( ... If you want a modern outlook at the same level of rigour that covers the same material you ought to look at Van Bladel's Electromagnetic Fields 2nd edition. Chapters 2 and 17 are a real treat (variational techniques and electrodynamics of moving bodies).

 

[TSny]

This is completely beside the point, but I just stumbled across this amusing paragraph in the preface.

 

[Teclis]

Just out of interest. Why Stratton?

I mean the only people I know who use Stratton are researchers (myself included) who need a few details omitted from later books. But it is even rare for me to pull my copy off of the shelf. There are more modern books that cover essentially the same material without the headache to decipher what Stratton is taking about... Seriously you ought to read the section where he introduces Laplace Transforms :( ... If you want a modern outlook at the same level of rigour that covers the same material you ought to look at Van Bladel's Electromagnetic Fields 2nd edition. Chapters 2 and 17 are a real treat (variational techniques and electrodynamics of moving bodies).

I wanted a comprehensive text that would not leave any holes my understanding. Stratton appeared to the one that was most often recommended, but thank you for your suggestion. I got a copy and am looking at it. I noticed, however, that both Stratton and Van Bladel are Electrical Engineers and the titles are listed under the IEEE. Would physicists also use these text or are there different text on Electromagnetic theory that are as well regarded in the physics community as Stratton and Van Bladel?

 

[deskswirl]

Physicists typically use different books. It seems to me that most of the current generation prefer Jackson's Classical Electrodynamics and Landau and Lifshitz's Electrodynamics of Continuous Media. Personally I prefer the older Panofsky and Philips to Jackson but Landau and Lifshitz is a charm. Books written for/by electrical engineers emphasis wave guiding, scattering, and radiation from antennas for the most part outside of that it is hit or miss on other topics physicists deem necessary. In a sense you could say that the EE's book are incomplete, which is true but they do cover topics in depth which physicists gloss over (but are important in engineering practice). I think the best way to learn is read one of each side by side.

Interesting historical fact: if you read Jackson's biography he says he used Stratton's text religiously before he entered graduate school at MIT. Not suprising as Stratton was the main upper undergrad text till probably the mid 1950s/early 1960s. To me Stratton and many of the (physics) electrodynamics books from that era, have a very electrical engineering feel to it, unlike say Jackson's latest edition. Perhaps electrical engineers are just 60 years behind physics in their electrodynamics education.

Of course EEs have been know to teach/learn from Jackson as well although I would say it is not common.

 

[Teclis]

Physicists typically use different books. It seems to me that most of the current generation prefer Jackson's Classical Electrodynamics and Landau and Lifshitz's Electrodynamics of Continuous Media. Personally I prefer the older Panofsky and Philips to Jackson but Landau and Lifshitz is a charm. Books written for/by electrical engineers emphasis wave guiding, scattering, and radiation from antennas for the most part outside of that it is hit or miss on other topics physicists deem necessary. In a sense you could say that the EE's book are incomplete, which is true but they do cover topics in depth which physicists gloss over (but are important in engineering practice). I think the best way to learn is read one of each side by side.

Interesting historical fact: if you read Jackson's biography he says he used Stratton's text religiously before he entered graduate school at MIT. Not suprising as Stratton was the main upper undergrad text till probably the mid 1950s/early 1960s. To me Stratton and many of the (physics) electrodynamics books from that era, have a very electrical engineering feel to it, unlike say Jackson's latest edition. Perhaps electrical engineers are just 60 years behind physics in their electrodynamics education.

Of course EEs have been know to teach/learn from Jackson as well although I would say it is not common.

Thank you very much! I was able to find PDFs of all of them on the web. What about for Hilbert Spaces? I looked in the index of Landau and Lifshitz's Quantum Mechanics and I didn't see them. They are supposed to be covered in Math texts on Topology and Analysis but it seems to be a real hit and miss in the ones I have looked at.

Is there a text you would recommend that covers Hilbert Spaces well ?

 

[Andreol263]

If you want to know more than the basics thar are necessary for the QM texts of what is a Hilbert Space, you need to start studying about Functional Analysis...

 

[Telemachus]

I think that the book Introductory Functional Analysis with Applications by Erwin Kreyszig is a pretty good introduction to Hilbert spaces. It has problems at the end of each chapter, and solutions at the end of the book. I've used it to study Hilbert spaces once. The book was on the library of my university.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0471504599/?tag=pfamazon01-20

 

[Teclis]

I think that the book Introductory Functional Analysis with Applications by Erwin Kreyszig is a pretty good introduction to Hilbert spaces. It has problems at the end of each chapter, and solutions at the end of the book. I've used it to study Hilbert spaces once. The book was on the library of my university.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0471504599/?tag=pfamazon01-20

Thanks, I found a copy on line. I like how he has a section right at the beginning where he defines all the notation used through out the book.