Electromagnetism - Principles and Modern Applications: The First Course Everyone Should Take

 Electromagnetism is often one of the hardest beginner undergraduate course for many students. Depending on the presentation of the material, the course can be either too mathematical in nature, obscuring the actual underlying physics; or contains too little detail of how to perform the calculations needed to appreciate the physical relevance of the phenomena studied. 

Electromagnetism - Principles and Modern Applications in this regard is perhaps one of the perfect examples of a first course in electromagnetism.

This text sets about first building the intuition needed to describe and evaluate quantities described by vector fields, starting with perhaps most initiative introduction to electrostatics I've seen; before then contextualising these techniques in the description of electrical circuits. This is then followed by a very nice introduction into magnetic fields, before coming to the derivation of the Maxwell equations.

The second half of the text then dedicates itself to describe electromagnetism from modern principles (relativistic and quantum). These chapters are then in view to the final chapter; which describe succinctly the author's research on state of the art dualities between electromagnetism and Einstein's general relativity (The Double Copy).

The most praiseworthy aspect of this text is its story telling nature; the text constantly reinforces the techniques and descriptions given in the previous sections, and then builds upon them in a satisfying, entertaining and overall extremely pedagogical way. Each section also comes equipped with exercises, which are all accompanied by detailed solutions in the appendix. 

One remark which I could possibly make as an improvement for s second edition would be the inclusion of more aspects of electromagnetism in media; sheerly for the prospect of having new, imaginative descriptions of electromagnetic phenomena (such as optics) by the author.

This text though not exhaustive, is singularly one of the best descriptions of beginner electromagnetism I have seen. The book is an illustrative journey; outlining, celebrating as well as teaching electromagnetism. 

Electromagnetism — Principles and Modern Applications
  • By  
  • Chris D White 
  • ISBN: 
    • 9781800613683
  •  

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