What topic in Electromagnetism do students find most difficult?

[kent davidge]

Is there a topic in electromagnetism that students usually have most difficult understanding than other areas?

I'm having a hard time studying diffraction. It's been the most difficult part.

 

[hutchphd]

I think the stuff you find hard is always the most difficult part.
I know that is a stupid answer but everything is hard if you get far enough into it . That is why we cannot close the physics book and put it on the shelf.

 

[osilmag]

Induced Voltage
Antenna Theory

 

[symbolipoint]

Is there a topic in electromagnetism that students usually have most difficult understanding than other areas?

ALL of it. Yes, ALL of it! This might have been (for me,) due to remaining immaturity in Calculus, Trigonometry, & Vectors when one could not SEE them; as well as just the physical concepts being yet too difficult for me. I still never understood the meanings for 'Ground' and 'Potential'.

I'm having a hard time studying diffraction. It's been the most difficult part.

Surprising. Nearly everything in the "Modern Physics" course was much easier to study, and understand than in the "Electricity & Magnetism" course (these for the Physics series courses for Science & Engineering students). Optics relied mostly on basic Trigonometry and Algebra. Far less stressful; far less confusing.

 

[Gaussian97]

For me, it was the EM inside materials (all this stuff with $\vec{D}$ and $\vec{H}$), and also the synchrotron radiation from the Liénard-Wiechert potentials.

 

[gmax137]

for me, it was the Div, Grad, Curl, and All That.

especially the curl.

 

[Fred Wright]

ALL of it. Yes, ALL of it!

Decades ago, when I was a first year graduate student, we were required to work through the entirety of J.D. Jackson's "Classical Electrodynamics". On the first day a class the E&M instructor announced; "Jackson's publisher has agreed to replace your used copy of the book in the event you throw it out the window and damage it some how." In other words, don't give up.

 

[Dr Transport]

Dielectric and magnetic materials were terrible for me.

 

[mpresic3]

I think Radiation was the hardest. Especially deriving the Lienard-Weichert Potentials.