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The Jackson text is one I've wanted to own for a long time. I've never seen another text used for graduate-level stuff. This is just the standard textbook for graduate-level electromagnetism and electrodynamics. It's in every physics professor's office. It's the standard and with good reason. Obviously, it's not for the beginner. For an excellent undergraduate-level treatment of the subject, see Griffiths.
780). So maybe Maxwell's equations don't always apply. How does Jackson treat vacuum. Well he's all over the map. And exactly which "vacuum" is this: the classical vacuum or the one with nonlinear polarizability, or maybe yet another one peculiar to the SI units where this speed can be defined, as opposed to measured.All this hair splitting serves here to point out a lack of interest by Jackson in coming to grips with some very, very basic questions, and if not answering them, at least stating what the issues involved in answering them might be, or failing even that, pointing the reader to some source where answers might be found. 10-11) we learn that "vacuum" has electric and magnetic polarizabilities that violate linearity.
This book is considered to be an authority in its area. 9 by relating "vacuum" to linearity: Maxwell's equations in "vacuum" are linear in the fields. The shoe doesn't drop. 523: What is the frequency dependence of the speed of light in vacuum. Vacuum crops up again on p. Then (p. However, that doesn't mean it's terrible clear, or even that it presents basic issues. An example is the treatment of "vacuum".
Clarity, clarity, clarity please.And "vacuum" crops up again in units: the speed of light in "vacuum" in SI units is defined as a nine digit number (p. Aren't there some loose ends here. So maybe the "vacuum" of Maxwell's equations is classical. With little idea of what "vacuum" is, how can this question be resolved. 13 we are told that in the classical domain linearity applies, but in the subatomic domain it doesn't.
but doesn't examine how to come to grips with whether observations actually took place in "vacuum", or if not, what corrections are needed to correct errors introduced by failure to achieve "vacuum", and is this "classical vacuum" or some other "vacuum". One is left feeling that Jackson is interested in the jam on the bread, not in the bread itself. Jackson discusses various subtleties like the implications of a hypothetical photon mass, pulsar observations, etc. "Vacuum" seems like a simple idea, but in fact it isn't just "the absence of everything". According to the index, this discussion is all that Jackson has to say about it.
So where are we. Jackson begins on p. In the summary on p.
I understand that this would at least quadruple the size of the book. I write about five pages of my own notes for every page of this text that I work through and haven't even attempted the problems yet. Some sort of middle ground, more than an intro e&m course provides, and less than this advanced treatment would be ideal (for me). Much of the content presented isn't actually inaccessible, but the presentation makes it initially scarier than it really ought to be. It will take years of self study at my rate to work through this book. I'd prefer expanded treatments of many of the topics with less haste and compactness.
That said, a lot of the problems are simply mathematics, offering no physical insight and doing nothing to develop one's understanding of the subject.If you want to actually learn E&M, there are much better books such as Vanderlinde. This book is indeed pretty awful. It also may prove useful if you already know the subject, although even after going through graduate E&M I still go back to Vanderlinde when I want a comprehensible explanation of something. If you want to work through math problems and attempt to parse some of the most terrible writing to ever see the light of day, Jackson may be for you. I basically agree with the other review that said it seems to be written for the sole purpose of confusing the reader. I found many of the problems to actually be quite easy once one gets past Jackson's atrocious writing and figures out what the question is actually asking.
It is the standard book, but I really learned more from it after reading other books that paid more attention to the reader's needs. When I think of Jackson I think qualifier problems. Problem solutions are online now and some solutions once you see how they work are not as bad as some reviewers would have you believe, but the comment that the problems sometimes seem to be make work is valid and some just seem to be problems for the sake of a clever solution rather than illuminating.
I found teaching from the book is different than being a student and trying to study the book. However when you need to find a result this can be a really useful book. It is hard to add much to 98 reviews that has not been said, but I do have my own opinions so this is the place to express them.
It is hard to read and the problems are notoriously hard but it is an essential reference. I give it a mixed review. After a quick read through Griffith's text I could usually follow Jackson's arguments on the corresponding material and Jackson does make useful extensions - especially if you are comfortable with special functions, eigenfunction expansions and Green's functions.
Even then the presentation can be frustrating since Jackson writes as if he were talking to the reader who already knows all this material and is showing him the tricks of the trade instead of developing the methods from the beginning.
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