Classical Electromagnetic Theory - (Fundamental Theories of Physics) 2nd Edition by Jack Vanderlinde (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer (1564-1642) This book is a second edition of "Classical Electromagnetic Theory" which derived from a set of lecture notes compiled over a number of years of teaching elect- magnetic theory to fourth year physics and electrical engineering students. These students had a previous exposure to electricity and magnetism, and the material from the ?rst four and a half chapters was presented as a review. I believe that the book makes a reasonable transition between the many excellent elementary books such as Gri?th's Introduction to Electrodynamics and the obviously graduate level books such as Jackson's Classical Electrodynamics or Landau and Lifshitz' Elect- dynamics of Continuous Media. If the students have had a previous exposure to Electromagnetictheory, allthematerialcanbereasonablycoveredintwosemesters. Neophytes should probable spenda semester on the ?rst four or ?ve chapters as well as, depending on their mathematical background, the Appendices B to F. For a shorter or more elementary course, the material on spherical waves, waveguides, and waves in anisotropic media may be omitted without loss of continuity.

From the Back Cover

This book is a self contained course in electromagnetic theory suitable for senior physics and electrical engineering students as well as graduate students whose past has not prepared them well for books such as Jackson or Landau and Lifschitz. The text is liberally sprinkled with worked examples illustrating the application of the theory to various physical problems. In this new edition I have endeavored to improve the accuracy and readability, added and further clarified examples, added sections on Schwarz-Christoffel mappings, and to make the book more self sufficient added an appendix on orthogonal function expansions and added the derivation of Bessel functions and Legendre polynomials as well as derivation of their generating functions. The number of student exercises has been increased by 45 over the previous edition.

This book stresses the unity of electromagnetic theory with electric and magnetic fields developed in parallel. SI units are used throughout and considerable use is made of tensor notation and the Levi-Cevita symbol. To more closely display the parallelism, extensive use is made of the scalar magnetic potential particularly in dealing with the Laplace and Poisson equation. 85 worked problems illustrate the theory. Conformal mappings are dealt with in some detail. Relevant mathematical material is provided in appendices.

For information regarding Solutions Manual, please contact the author Jack Vanderlinde at: jvd@unb.ca or see website www.unb.ca/fredericton/science/physics/jvdl.

Review Quotes

From the reviews of the second edition:

"Electromagnetic theory is a core subject for students of physics and is often taught at various levels ... . Vanderlinde's book is aimed in between - for the advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate course ... . provides appendixes to cover the tensor framework and special functions that are needed. ... A large number of worked examples provides students with a toehold in dealing with problems. This book would serve as a solid addition to the physics collection of an undergraduate or graduate library. Summing Up: Highly recommended." (J. McCleary, CHOICE, Vol. 43 (1), September, 2005)

"This textbook is written for senior-level college/university students of physics and electrical engineering. It is based on the author's classroom lecture notes. ... The developments in the text are supported by a collection of very well-drawn figures. Most chapters include some worked-out examples to illustrate new concepts ... ." (Philip Huddleston, Mathematical Reviews, Issue 2008 k)