A Student's Guide to Maxwell's Equations (Student's Guides)

The author Daniel Fleisch is to be congratulated for this wonderful book. It is perfect for both students and self learners. There are nice exercises at the end of each chapter. There are on-line hints to solve each of the problems or you can look up the fully solved answer. If you are a student you should obviously try to solve the problems first without help and then resort to the hints and fully worked out problems. For more casual readers it is wonderful just to see the worked out problems. Each of the chapters is succinct and the writing very clear. The book is written at a undergraduate level. A few errors in the text appear to have been worked out with each successive printing. Please see the Cambridge website errata list. You will need the basics of vector and multidimensional calculus to easily follow the text. Some basic understanding of electricity and magnetism would also be helpful. I have not looked at the lectures on You-Tube but look forward to watching them. The same author has another text on vectors and tensors which I have just ordered. I would encourage him to write a similar style books on basic quantum mechanics and particle physics.Addendum:According to Amazon I first ordered this work in 2011. I decided to read it once again after ten years. It remains one of the best examples texts that are written for self learners. I would only add that review of basic trigonometry, vector calculus, spherical and cylindrical coordinate systems will make your study easier. This should include familiarity with flux, gradient, divergence, and curl. Some degree of comfort with Stoke's theorem and the divergence theorem is also helpful. If you have that foundation, Fleisch's Maxwell's Equations is a fast and beautiful read.The question is what do you do if your foundation was never built or needs to be refreshed. There are many workbooks. I have enjoyed Stroud's Engineering Mathematics and Advanced Engineering Mathematics. Their approach of step by step programed learning works well. However, I do wish that they had worked out solutions for the additional problems. My 1st edition of Schey's Divergence, Grad, Curl and all that is extremely well worn. I have not seen the newer editions. Hopefully they have more examples with fully worked out solutions. Someone should write a version for self learners with fully worked out solutions would be great. For self learners the Schaum 3000 solved problems series has lot of worked out examples. My copies of Precalculus, Calculus, and Physics have been extensively used. There are many other alternatives. Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences by Boas is widely used in colleges prior to advanced physics and engineering classes. Unfortunately it does not have worked out solutions for the problems. For a quick review of the the math and physics problems please see Chris McMullen's 100 Instructive Calculus-based Physics Examples. Volume 2 :Electricity and Magnetism. I have just started it. It looks well done and will write a review of it in the future.

Maxwell's equations are some of the most important things that you will learn if you are taking physics and/or working on an electrical engineering degree. They basically describe the concepts of electricity and magnetism, which apply to things like the power to our homes to semiconductor chips that are in every single device we own. Unfortunately, a lot of the textbooks (both physics and EM engineering textbooks) give them a bit of short shrift, giving a basic explanation and maybe deriving one or two of them, but do not give a good explanation of why they are useful and, thus, what they represent can be lost on students.This is a small book (about 130 pages) that covers all four equations, one per chapter. That breaks down what each equation represents, what the variables in the equation mean, and provides both the integral form of the equations and the differential form. I think the best way to use this guide is to supplement your textbook material so that when you get to the point in the textbook where one of the equations is discussed, use this to flesh out the theory behind the equations that your textbook may not cover (or cover in as much detail). To be clear, this is not something like "Maxwell's Equations for Dummies" or something like that, which assumes you have little to no background going in. You do need to have some understanding of calculus (if you have taken multivariable calculus, that will definitely help because there is a lot of discussion of surface integrals and vectors), and know some of the physics concepts you will learn before getting to the electricity and magnetism topics (which is covered in the second semester of physics). So, if you are taking calculus-based physics and/or have to take an electricity and magnetism class (electric and magnetic fields) as a part of an engineering program, this will be very useful. It is probably overkill for those who just have to take algebra-based physics because it will go way beyond what you will be exposed to in class or expected to learn.

I recently got a job where having more than a passing familiarity with electromagnetic theory is in my best interest. I was a physics major many years ago but had forgotten everything I ever knew about the subject. I started out by watching the Walter Lewin videos from MIT and working every odd electromagnetics problem in the Freshman electromagnetism text book, Serway (something like 200 problems). At this point I thought I really knew my stuff. So I moved on to a more advanced undergraduate text book hoping to once again work through the entire book then maybe move on to a graduate level text.That hit me like a brick wall. The jump in difficulty between freshman physics and advanced undergraduate physics is huge. After working a couple problems which neither seemed practical nor well written I gave up.Now, a few months later I bought this book. It really is an amazing book to bridge that gap. It is just so much better written and is really made for someone to teach themselves the subject. Many books are assuming a professor to fill in the blanks. This is particularly bad when the books don't give answers to problems. It is absolutely impossible to learn a subject without feedback. Problems without solutions are worthless. Unfortunately the answers for this book are not in the book, but the website is good enough that it makes up for it.By the end of every chapter I have had a much better understanding of the subject. I haven't got back to the more advanced textbooks though, so it remains to be seen if I need more to bring me up to where I need to be. If nothing else I know a lot more than when I bought the book though.