Cambridge University Press A Student's Guide to Maxwell's Equations

A complete gem. So often, so-called mathematical "teaching" texts are just mathematicians talking to other mathematicians or geniuses with nothing but pages of terse non-user-friendly proofs and theorems, most of which are impenetrable to many who might otherwise be capable of understanding the subject. This book sets out to get you to understand the subject, not just regurgitate endless proofs. It is a real teacher helping real learners to understand. Every equation is fully explained and even annotated when necessary. Copious well thought out, clear diagrams and worked examples consistently get the messages through and demolish ambiguity. To get the best out of this book, you will need a reasonable (not genuis-level) undestanding of multivariate calculus and vector calculus. I can't help feeling that this book represents the writing on the wall for the worst of the old-fashioned style of teaching text. I'm not aware of anythng else like it but I'm pretty sure there will soon be many more books like it. The most important proof this book provides is that Maths is not impenetrable but has simply been traditionally made impenetrable by those who can't or won't explain. This book shows clearly the difference between explanation and mere definitions and proofs.

I dont know how many ways I can say, I loved this book sooo much. When I was simply trying to understand the Maxwell's equations, this book saved me. Guess what, this book would refresh concept even from the very basic vector dot product, cross product etc, so there is no chance that, the reader will find some concepts inaccessible. It covers what is divergence, what is gradient, what is Curl etc (even though, I would recommend the reader to get the concept of Divergence, Curl, Gradient cleared before reading this book; the reader can get those concepts from Khan Academy online). This book explained well 'what is path integral', 'what is surface integral', 'why there is a circle sign in the middle of a integral operator' etc. Anyway, I wont believe that, someone who understands calculus, wont understand maxwell's equations even after reading this very thin book with very less effort. The reader does not even need to be a master of calculus. If a partial derivative and Integral operator makes sense to the reader, he/she will find this book accessible. In the last chapter, (chapter 5), the author derived the Electromagnetic wave equations from maxwell's equation. That part was the most exciting part for me as I was simply waiting for learning that. If the reader knows that, a Wave Equation can be expressed in second order partial derivative form, then, this chapter will makes sense. This book did not explain where and how we got the Wave equation using second order partial derivative. I think, the author could explain that in a paragraph by writing few lines. As I was already familiar with wave equation, I did not have any problem understanding that part. Anyway, I find my every penny worth and I feel myself fortunate that I bought this book.

Merci, merci, merci! Après des dizaines d’heures d’étude de l électromagnétisme en classe prépa j’avais l’impression d’être passé à côté de la beauté profonde des équations de Maxwell. Ce livre et ses exercices (typiques de prepa selon moi) dont les corrections sont sur Internet est une référence. Plusieurs lectures ne lassent pas.

Die Maxwell'schen Gleichungen, stellen den Beginn einer neuen Physik dar.In diesem Werk werden in knapper Form die wesentliche Erkenntnisse der Maxwell'schen Theorie auf den Punkt gebracht und anhand einfacher einleuchtender Beispiele gezeigt, wie man sie anwendet. Wenn man die Mathematik kann, das ist allerdings die Voraussetzung, ist man in der Lage innerhalb eines Nachmittags dieses Werk zu verinnerlichen, und sich die wichtigsten Resultate der Klassischen Elektrodynamik ins Gedächtnis zurückzurufen und was man damit machen kann.

Great value, the book offers a clear explanation to all aspects of the maxwell equations at an affordable price! The book also gives some exercises and detailed answers at the end of all (sub)chapters. It might be a good idea to have some knowledge about vectors, vector fields and matrices. Thats probably the reason amazon recommended also buying a students guide to vectors and tensors. I have not read that book, so I am not sure if its a good recommendation to read before reading this book.