Which Physics Book on Electricity and Magnetism Explains Concepts in Vectors?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around recommendations for physics books on electricity and magnetism that effectively explain concepts using vectors. Participants explore various texts suitable for different levels of understanding, particularly focusing on calculus-based resources.

Discussion Character

  • Debate/contested
  • Technical explanation
  • Conceptual clarification
  • Homework-related

Main Points Raised

  • One participant seeks a book that emphasizes vector concepts in electricity and magnetism, expressing dissatisfaction with their current algebra/trig-based textbook.
  • Several participants recommend Griffiths' "Introduction to Electrodynamics" and Purcell's "Electricity and Magnetism," noting their relevance for different academic levels.
  • There is a discussion about the difficulty of Purcell compared to Griffiths, with some participants asserting that Griffiths is easier, while others argue the opposite.
  • One participant suggests that skipping exercises in textbooks undermines the learning process, while another acknowledges time constraints that prevent them from completing exercises.
  • Additional book recommendations include works by David K. Cheng, Oleg D. Jefimenko, and Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky, with varying opinions on their accessibility and depth.
  • Participants express differing views on the rigor and usefulness of Jackson's "Classical Electrodynamics," with some finding it challenging and others criticizing its mathematical approach.
  • There is a mention of using supplementary texts like Mary L. Boas' "Mathematical Methods" alongside the primary physics textbooks for better understanding.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants do not reach a consensus on which book is the best for understanding electricity and magnetism through vectors. Multiple competing views on the difficulty and appropriateness of various texts persist throughout the discussion.

Contextual Notes

Participants express varying levels of familiarity with calculus and the expectations of their respective courses, which may influence their recommendations and the perceived difficulty of the texts discussed.

  • #31
You can certainly derive Maxwell's equations just from the Coloumb force and special relativity, although it isn't a proof because you can't prove laws of physics. This is something Purcell devotes much of his text to. Griffiths is a standard text for 2nd year physics students but if you want mathematical rigor then you won't find any in Griffiths. I second vanhees' recommendation of Schwinger though, that book rocks. Also, there's Franklin: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0805387331/?tag=pfamazon01-20
 
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  • #32
WannabeNewton said:
You can certainly derive Maxwell's equations just from the Coloumb force and special relativity, although it isn't a proof because you can't prove laws of physics. This is something Purcell devotes much of his text to. Griffiths is a standard text for 2nd year physics students but if you want mathematical rigor then you won't find any in Griffiths. I second vanhees' recommendation of Schwinger though, that book rocks. Also, there's Franklin: Classical Electromagnetism: Jerrold Franklin: 9780805387339: Amazon.com: Books

I have Jerold Franklin's book, it's quite advanced for OP.
 
  • #33
As I'm looking through the contents of the books I can tell that with my knowledge that many of the books will be to advanced. Many of the books posted cover material that I will cover in two or three semester because I am only in my first semester of circuits.
My goal is to improve on the knowledge that I have about Electricity and Magnetism. In my Electricity and Magnetism course we learned about various concepts such as electric fields, electric potential, electric current, magnetism, power, energy, and so on..

These are the subjects that I would like to have a better understanding on. Are there any books out there that cover the basic concepts in an electricity and magnetism course in a more mathematical approach?
 
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  • #34
AFAIK, Purcell is the best for that because the level of mathematics is no higher than vector calculus so it should be easy as far as mathematics goes but it goes very deeply into how the math fits into EM and special relativity. But you have to do the problems of course.
 
  • #35
Like everyone else mentioned, I'd go for Purcell and Griffiths. Personally, we used Purcell as sophomores and Griffiths as juniors. Seemed to work out ok. While I did go through a most of Jackson on my own in graduate school, if you *really* get E&M at the level of Griffiths, and I mean *really* get it, then you'll know E&M better than most physics BAs and BSs.

Also like everyone else mentioned, you'll need to do the problems.
 
  • #36
kinkmode said:
Like everyone else mentioned, I'd go for Purcell and Griffiths. Personally, we used Purcell as sophomores and Griffiths as juniors. Seemed to work out ok. While I did go through a most of Jackson on my own in graduate school, if you *really* get E&M at the level of Griffiths, and I mean *really* get it, then you'll know E&M better than most physics BAs and BSs.

Also like everyone else mentioned, you'll need to do the problems.

+1000. You really have to keep at it and you'll get the feel with time. Griffiths use problems to proof a lot of the equations not cover in the book. So problems is not just to drill you, they are actually a continuation of the textbook. I down loaded the solution manual I( Ha ha!) and I really use it to the fullness to learn.
 
  • #37
Miike012 said:
As I'm looking through the contents of the books I can tell that with my knowledge that many of the books will be to advanced. Many of the books posted cover material that I will cover in two or three semester because I am only in my first semester of circuits.
My goal is to improve on the knowledge that I have about Electricity and Magnetism. In my Electricity and Magnetism course we learned about various concepts such as electric fields, electric potential, electric current, magnetism, power, energy, and so on..

These are the subjects that I would like to have a better understanding on. Are there any books out there that cover the basic concepts in an electricity and magnetism course in a more mathematical approach?

You have to be patient to read your book. Work through the problems...then read it again. A chief scientist/program head friend of mine that leaded the laser group in Locheed told me, you don't understand the book until you read it the 15th time! Believe me, I studied from beginning to end 4 times with different books and work out most of the problems. Every time, I felt I gain a lot more insight.

If you think most of the books are too advanced, take a look at Ulaby I mentioned. It is like an introduction to EM preparing you for Cheng. It is a dynamite book for beginners. It's going to be more difficult than your book, but it shave off a lot of advanced stuff and keep it simple( relatively) and clear.

Are you EE instead of physics as you mentioned circuits? If so, use the first few chapters of Griffiths only, don't go to chapter 10 and 11. I am an EE, physics EM and EE EM deviates in wave propagation and retarded fields. Physics don't seems to go into phasor form and stay with retarded fields that is almost useless in EE study. Phasor is the foundation of RF, antenna and transmission lines study. I wasted my time in Griffiths chapter 10 and 11 which are really hard chapters. Phasor embedded the retarded fields and potentials.

You check out the youtube lectures I posted for you? At least it's free, just spend the time listening to it and take notes. That is at the level of Cheng. It's time to let the rubber hit the road instead of talking about it. Remember, read it many times, do the problems.

Lastly, make sure you review Stoke's, curl, line integral etc. You need to really have a good idea the physical interpretation of circulation and divergence. Make sure you understand the last part of the Cal III in-side-out. It is not good enough to get an A, that's the easy part, you really have to learn to "see" it. Then, when you study Maxwell's equations, you'll have the insight of them in action. On the side note, I find calculus book by Thomas & Finley have very good description "in English" for the curl, Green's theorem and divergence.
 
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  • #39
The 3rd edition is fine. The 4th edition barely changes anything. But keep in mind that if you want mathematical rigor, Griffiths won't provide it. But if your main interest is physics then I guess that isn't really a problem.
 
  • #41
WannabeNewton said:
The 3rd edition is fine. The 4th edition barely changes anything. But keep in mind that if you want mathematical rigor, Griffiths won't provide it. But if your main interest is physics then I guess that isn't really a problem.

Not to hijack this thread, I want to slowly pursue advanced EM. I am still looking for a book with very heavy math derivation. I have Franklin, Jackson and the Advanced EM by Balanis. Do you have any suggestion on one best for self studying as I am too old to go to school AND it's not easy to find a school offering that...and cheap! Most books jump steps in derivation of equations. I end up spending a lot of time digging around to derive the equations on my own. Then I have to tape the notes onto the books. The books usually getting thicker after I done with it!

Also, I only finished PDE and studied Green's function. What other math I should study before diving into the advanced EM books?

thanks
 
  • #42
yungman said:
Lastly, make sure you review Stoke's, curl, line integral etc. You need to really have a good idea the physical interpretation of circulation and divergence. Make sure you understand the last part of the Cal III in-side-out. It is not good enough to get an A, that's the easy part, you really have to learn to "see" it. Then, when you study Maxwell's equations, you'll have the insight of them in action. On the side note, I find calculus book by Thomas & Finley have very good description "in English" for the curl, Green's theorem and divergence.

I have a few pdf's that I am planning on reading. They are

DIV, Grad, Curl, & All That: An Informal Text on Vector Calculus: Harry M. Schey, H. M. Schey: 9780393969979: Amazon.com: Books

A Student's Guide to Maxwell's Equations: Daniel Fleisch: 9780521701471: Amazon.com: Books

Looks like I have a long road ahead because I want to review calc 1,2,and 3 diff equations, linear algebra, and I have a couple of advanced books on trig and algebra.

I just don't see how I'm going to find all this time because I'm going to have to read multiple books on each subject and do the problems plus focus on the classes that I am taking right now.

The reason why I feel the need to review all this material is because I don't like my schools curriculum. It's to easy and I don't feel like I'm learning enough
 
  • #43
Miike012 said:
I have a few pdf's that I am planning on reading. They are

DIV, Grad, Curl, & All That: An Informal Text on Vector Calculus: Harry M. Schey, H. M. Schey: 9780393969979: Amazon.com: Books

A Student's Guide to Maxwell's Equations: Daniel Fleisch: 9780521701471: Amazon.com: Books

Looks like I have a long road ahead because I want to review calc 1,2,and 3 diff equations, linear algebra, and I have a couple of advanced books on trig and algebra.

I just don't see how I'm going to find all this time because I'm going to have to read multiple books on each subject and do the problems plus focus on the classes that I am taking right now.

The reason why I feel the need to review all this material is because I don't like my schools curriculum. It's to easy and I don't feel like I'm learning enough
That's the name of the game! Did I mentioned that I reviewed the Cal III 4 or 5 times and I am currently just finished reviewing PDE to review Green's Function!:cry: That's the old brain for you! It's like going in one side and leak out the other side!

But I hate cross word puzzle, EM is my cross word puzzle for my retirement!
 
  • #44
yungman said:
Do you have any suggestion on one best for self studying as I am too old to go to school AND it's not easy to find a school offering that...and cheap!
Well I don't know about how good it is for purely self-study, but Jackson is certainly heavy in mathematical methods. You could always give it a go and see if you find it effective in the self-study sphere.

yungman said:
Also, I only finished PDE and studied Green's function. What other math I should study before diving into the advanced EM books?
I don't think you need to study anything extra; even Green's functions are usually introduced in the EM texts themselves.
 
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  • #45
yungman said:
That's the name of the game! Did I mentioned that I reviewed the Cal III 4 or 5 times and I am currently just finished reviewing PDE to review Green's Function!:cry: That's the old brain for you! It's like going in one side and leak out the other side!

But I hate cross word puzzle, EM is my cross word puzzle for my retirement!

What I don't understand is how the majority of people who are pursuing an electrical eng degree such as I am don't take learning more seriously. They don't read the material, review previous material, and are satisfied with getting a C in the class. How do people like this get degrees and lead a successful career? I don't understand it.
 
  • #46
Miike012 said:
I have a few pdf's that I am planning on reading. They are

We used the Div/Grad book for the first week or two of sophomore year in E&M - the same class we did Purcell. From what I recall, it was a nice overview of the necessary vector calc.
 
  • #47
Miike012 said:
What I don't understand is how the majority of people who are pursuing an electrical eng degree such as I am don't take learning more seriously. They don't read the material, review previous material, and are satisfied with getting a C in the class. How do people like this get degrees and lead a successful career? I don't understand it.

Judging by *some* of the engineers I've seen out there in the 'real world', I'm not surprised.

There are crappy mediocre people in every field. Engineering and physics included.
 
  • #48
Miike012 said:
I have a few pdf's that I am planning on reading. They are

DIV, Grad, Curl, & All That: An Informal Text on Vector Calculus: Harry M. Schey, H. M. Schey: 9780393969979: Amazon.com: Books

A Student's Guide to Maxwell's Equations: Daniel Fleisch: 9780521701471: Amazon.com: Books



The reason why I feel the need to review all this material is because I don't like my schools curriculum. It's to easy and I don't feel like I'm learning enough

That vector calculus book was decent, and a very quick read, you should be able to cover the entire thing (or at least the important parts) in a day or two. If you're already familiar with vector calculus though, I don't think you'd get anything out of it, it's purely focused on application, with almost no rigor.
 
  • #49
WannabeNewton said:
Well I don't know about how good it is for purely self-study, but Jackson is certainly heavy in mathematical methods. You could always give it a go and see if you find it effective in the self-study sphere.


I don't think you need to study anything extra; even Green's functions are usually introduced in the EM texts themselves.

Thanks
 
  • #50
Miike012 said:
What I don't understand is how the majority of people who are pursuing an electrical eng degree such as I am don't take learning more seriously. They don't read the material, review previous material, and are satisfied with getting a C in the class. How do people like this get degrees and lead a successful career? I don't understand it.

I was a manager of EE for many years. When I hire engineers, I made up a test no more difficult than what I learn in AA degree in Heald College. You'll be surprised how bad they failed. You talk to a lot of EE, they don't even want to talk about EM class, all they say was they creep through it. There are two ways to study EE. The easy way is to treat is as cook book and blindly use the formula and rely on simulation. The other way is to really go through the math like what we are talking about.

Unless you are in some good colleges, getting A is nothing. In my area, I have San Jose State, Santa Clara and Stanford. It is way too expensive to enroll in Stanford and Santa Clara as cross word puzzle! My big boss...wife is going to kill me for that! I communicated with quite a few professors in SJ state and I bought their books and followed their syllabus. They use Ulaby as EM book for EE and do nothing more than the exercise in the book. I did every single problems they posted...Then I had to study Cheng and Griffiths. their PDE class is so water down I have to use another book by Strauss. They even have to skip a lot of the Bessel and Lagendre function which are the hardest part of the PDE. I interviewed a graduate student from SJ state, it was sad.
 
  • #51
kinkmode said:
Judging by *some* of the engineers I've seen out there in the 'real world', I'm not surprised.

There are crappy mediocre people in every field. Engineering and physics included.

Tell me about it, it's so hard to find good engineer. One guy that absolutely cannot design if his life depends on it. He decided to go back to school to pursue a PhD to teach. I feel bad for his students.

I never study a day of EE in school, I studied everything on my own. At the beginning I felt inferior. Then I started looking and talking to other engineers...My God! Where have they been, how do they manage to go through school?! I used to joke, if I were their manager, first thing I would do is to fire a programmer from UC Berkley and then a mechanical engineer from Stanford! When I worked in Seimen Ultrasound div in the 80s, there was a guy from MIT that designed the RF front end. I ended up had to redesigned the whole thing over.
 
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  • #52
yungman said:
Not to hijack this thread, I want to slowly pursue advanced EM. I am still looking for a book with very heavy math derivation. I have Franklin, Jackson and the Advanced EM by Balanis. Do you have any suggestion on one best for self studying as I am too old to go to school AND it's not easy to find a school offering that...and cheap! Most books jump steps in derivation of equations. I end up spending a lot of time digging around to derive the equations on my own. Then I have to tape the notes onto the books. The books usually getting thicker after I done with it!

Also, I only finished PDE and studied Green's function. What other math I should study before diving into the advanced EM books?

thanks

balanis goes through the math steps much more than any other "advanced" book, which is why his book is so HUGE and yet doesn't cover variational principles or other useful things. It also means it is a lousy reference once you know the material since it is painful to wade through it all.

Check the book reviews in the physics and engineering books sections, and you may find some more answers without hijacking this thread anymore.
 
  • #53
jasonRF said:
balanis goes through the math steps much more than any other "advanced" book, which is why his book is so HUGE and yet doesn't cover variational principles or other useful things. It also means it is a lousy reference once you know the material since it is painful to wade through it all.

Check the book reviews in the physics and engineering books sections, and you may find some more answers without hijacking this thread anymore.

I actually think Balanis is not that good. I am studying his Antenna theory, it is THE book for antenna, but it is so lack of derivation. That's the reason I am on the Calculus and Classical Physics so much in the last two months.

I have not gone through most of his advanced EM book, but I did studied the section in polarization. It is really bad. It talked a little about poyncare sphere but failed short of even make it meaningful. In fact, I have yet to find a book that really get into polarization of EM wave...Forget about Griffiths and all the undergrad books, they have nothing. Took me a month to gather the info from multiple books like Kraus and online articles to put together to even make sense out of it. Actually, after going through it over and over, it's very easy!

That's the problem with the advanced EM, you can't even find articles and you can't trust the articles. All the mistakes, typos and everything. It's a nightmare. The Antenna theory by Balanis is not that good, but you have no other choice. It's not like undergrad books that you have tons to pick with. I am stalled right now for over a month on a few statements Balanis made on just a simple loop antenna that require Helmholtz, Gauge theorem and Green Function. I have been patiently review all these in order to come back to only Chapter 5!

Oh! I sure know what the OP is complaining about, boy do I know it! It is frustrated to no end studying these advanced stuff. You can't get answer! You don't even know how many times I was about to throw in the towel and call it a quit! It's not as if my life depends on it. I am retired and living very comfortably. My wife called me S&M!

Sorry about the rant, it's been pent up for so long, It's like crying so loud and nobody responded. Even in here, I have to be so careful in chopping up to smaller pieces to ask a question or else I never even get a response...and Yes, I tried so many times with no response. And I have 3 other forums to ask and absolute no luck most of the time. Sorry for the ranting, I just cannot stop. And I have absolutely sympathy with the OP.

BTW, I had posted multiple articles of Balanis, I did not agree, neither were all the people here that read it. You really have to be careful with the post grad books. Did I catch mistakes on the Phase Lock Loop books on both Roland Best and William F Egan. Both actually responded to my complain. One offer to sent me a manuscript and the other gave me a website with the correction. You can't even trust what you read!

Unless you have three book giving you the EXACT equation, VERIFY. They are only human and they can be wrong.
 
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  • #54
yungman said:
Not to hijack this thread, I want to slowly pursue advanced EM. I am still looking for a book with very heavy math derivation. I have Franklin, Jackson and the Advanced EM by Balanis. Do you have any suggestion on one best for self studying as I am too old to go to school AND it's not easy to find a school offering that...and cheap! Most books jump steps in derivation of equations. I end up spending a lot of time digging around to derive the equations on my own. Then I have to tape the notes onto the books. The books usually getting thicker after I done with it!

Also, I only finished PDE and studied Green's function. What other math I should study before diving into the advanced EM books?

thanks

Hi, I don't know if you have seen this book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0486656780/?tag=pfamazon01-20. According to the author, the approach is "theoretical in the sense that the subject matter is developed step by step from the Maxwell field equations".
 
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  • #55
verty said:
Hi, I don't know if you have seen this book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0486656780/?tag=pfamazon01-20. According to the author, the approach is "theoretical in the sense that the subject matter is developed step by step from the Maxwell field equations".

I just bought it on Amazon. Got a used one For $2.50 +$3.99 shipping. Good deal. I like to collect books, this book has the multi pole expansion that I want to study more.

Thanks
 
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  • #56
Miike012 said:
what about the following books...

Electricity and Magnetism: Munir H. Nayfeh, Morton K. Brussel: 9780471876816: Amazon.com: Books

This is an amazing book to bridge the gap between theory and practice. It is a treasure trove of solved EM problems that really helps in understanding the implications of many theoretical concepts. I am not sure how it will fare as the sole EM book for a beginner, but this book is a must have, in my opinion.
I also heard there's a newer edition on the way, but I am not sure when it is due.

As for theory, what about a classic?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0486439240/?tag=pfamazon01-20
Panofsky and Phillips, Classical Electricity and Magnetism, 2nd edition.
Inexpensive but... dense.
A little old fashioned in formalism but a nice reference to have.
 
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