Classical Electrodynamics

Rating:
Summary: Have your Arfken ready beside you
Review: I am currently taking the second semester of a full-year course in graduate electrodynamics. We've been using Jackson as our main textbook, but the professor sometimes use his own collection of problems as our homeworks. I've just realize why he did it, some of the problems in Jackson are extremely difficult.

However, I agree with another reviewer who stated that once you are armed with full mathematical apparatus, the book would be a gold mine of electrodynamics. My own method of study involves derivations of formulas, following the discussion in Jackson. This is really hardwork, but it worth the effort.

For those who are mathematically deficient, I suggest you to have your Arfken ready beside you (G.B. Arfken, H.J. Weber, Mathematical Methods for Physicist, 5th edition, Academic Press, ISBN 0120598256). As far as I know, this is the only book still in printing that provide almost all mathematical tools required for Jackson: Vector analysis, coordinate systems, tensor analysis, Lorentz group, partial differential equations and separations of variables, Sturm-Liouville theory, Green functions, Laplace, Helmholtz, modified Helmholtz (wave) equations, Bessel functions, Legendre functions (including the second solution and vector spherical harmonics), Fourier series and transform, and many more.

Jackson and Arfken are really pair, you can't learn Jackson without Arfken.

For those whose lack physical insights and need to brush up your undergraduate electromagnetism, I recommended one and only one textbook: D.J. Griffiths Introduction to Electrodynamics. I compared the discussion in Griffiths and Jackson, and I surprised to find that there are some indentical choices of topics like Jefimenko's equations, potentials and fields, development of Maxwell tensor, even L.V. Lorenz gauge condition ! I suspect that Jackson and Griffiths have collaborated during the writings of their third edition books.
No wonder those two books dominated Physics Departments in the world.

I'm currently waiting for Schwinger's Classical Electrodynamics, I read about good comments about it. I'll write more after I compared Jackson with Schwinger.

Rating:
Summary: It doesn't matter what I say here
Review: The reviews I've read on this book can provide some decent information when read en masse, but they don't seem to be individually relevant.

For every person that enjoys this book for its thoroughness, there will be another that hates it for its style or choices of examples. For every person that calls the mathematics too difficult, there will be some genius grad student at one of the Caltechs of the world who will say "you just don't like it because you don't get it."

No matter what kind of student you are, your professor for graduate E+M will probably decide to assign this book anyway. My case was bad because we tried to "cover" the book in a single semester. Still, there's enough in this book to give a two-semester E+M student fits.

My only concern, personally, regards the message the book sends. Others have lauded Jackson for his physical insights, but after sludging through all the mathematics and a number of problems, students might get the message that this is really math and not so much physics. For something like E+M, perhaps that is a productive message to send, but for students like me, sensing that message can be disappointing.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book!!
Review: This book is an excellent book on E&M. Math is a must and knowing it is the key not just "seeing it before." Master Griffiths' electrodynamics book, all the math there is to know, and then try Jackson's book. After this book, you'll know everything about classical electrodynamics.

Rating:
Summary: The most comprehensive Physics text I have ever read
Review: There is a reason that so many universities use this text for graudate courses in E&M. Every single special function that I successfully avoided as an undergrad has shown up within the pages of this text. Jackson is thorough and more thorough. Chapters 2 and 3 introduce fundamental techniques that must be mastered in order to understand the rest of the text. Jackson's treatment of separation of variables (while solving Laplace's Equation) does not stop with the introduction of Legendre Polynomials and Spherical Harmonics... he then introduces Bessel Functions, and eventually connects Green's Functions with expansions in spherical and cylindrical coordinate systems. He has a brief section on mixed boundary conditions at the end of chapter 3. For anyone looking for a very comprehensive text on the subject of electrodynamics, I strongly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: Reader
Review: I fail to see how this textbook became a standard in Graduate level Electrodynamics. I found myself often feeling confused and frustrated with this textbook. There are so many better written books on this subject out there - so please look! The problems are next to impossible to solve and Jackson often leaves too many blanks in his derivations leaving you with the "What the ...is going on?" feeling. Heed my warnings on this book or be prepared to repeat the suffering of previous graduate students!

Rating:
Summary: Nice Text but the Problems SUCK!
Review: This is an excellent textbook for graduate level students and beyond but the problems at the end of the chapters are close to full blown research projects. It's not that they aren't interesting, but most of them are so difficult that even bright graduate students must resort to working in groups, scouring the internet for previous solutions, and then putting in many more hours of study in order to complete just 2-5 problems a week. Sure the problems are fun to play with in your spare time, but they are so time consuming and time would be better spent working more problems that were slightly easier or reading/covering extra material. This text should certainly be on everyone's shelf who is serious about the subject and all graduate students should study it, but the problems are torture.

Rating:
Summary: Handy as a reference, pedagogically useless.
Review: This is what I wrote a year or so agao:

"What a throughly wretched text! Absolutely without clairity, the essentials of the subject buried in a muck of detail, most of which have limited jusification and application anyway. For a book called "Classical Electrodynamics", there is no coherent treatment of classical field theory at all. No illustrative examples, minimal physical motivation. The whole text seems a covoluted exercise in Green's Functions and vector calculus. It is possibly useful as a reference, but I doubt it. Try Walter Greiner's text, or on a higher level, the two texts by Landau and Liftsitz. Otherwise the sooner Jackson is gotten rid of, the better."

Nowadays I have to admit the book is quite handy as a reference, as Jackson is just so [...] thorough in his coverage of the subject -- if it has anything to do with E&M, it is probably in the book. If you are a physicist, sooner or later you are going to have look up something or other in it.

Nevertheless the original complaints remain. The book is simply wretched pedagogically. Its expositions are simply to bogged down in detail that the essantial physics is obscured. With Greiner or Landau, everything is so clearly exposited, one feels like a fool for not seeing how obvious everything is. With Jackson, one just feels like a fool -- unless you already know your E&M. The absence of examples or physical motivation is inexplicable for a textbook (though if you think the book as a reference, then it's really not so bad). And the lack of treatment of classical field theory is a grave omission in a book about the classical example of classical field theories.

Rating:
Summary: Nice rigorous treatment
Review: This book is worth the effort. The mathematics involved is rigorous but necessary. The physical interpretation of electrodynamics is well elucidated in this classic.

Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece on Electrodynamics
Review: Jackson's text even in its third incarnation is a masterpiece. Certainly, one needs to be firm in the mathematics involved here, but this is a requirement for understanding electrodynamics anyway. The only other textbook from the U.S. on a similar level is Panofsky/Phillips and that is to my knowledge as of this moment out of print.The collection of problems alone is so rich, that an instructor won't have problems creating exams from it. Student can check their knowledge by going through them. Sure, some of them are very hard and I guess there are enough students that cry because of this. However, nothing is more rewarding but to go through the book and the problems combined. Mastering this books means mastering electrodynamics.

Rating:
Summary: What I would want in an ideal world
Review: My enthusiasm for this book would come from several sources.

Firstly, having been brought up on the kind of treatment that Julius Stratton gave the subject, I would like to see a few holes from then to the current time filled in. These would be

a). The role of variational theory in solving multi-mode exansions in boundary problems. I know this came about in the sixties, when spectral techniques were just beginning to be useful

b). A nice introduction to the use of Greens functions in solving problems where source distributions are well understood, and

c) The role (again, from a beginning standpoint) of integral equations where the source distributions (current distributions, for instance) are not well understood, but where the domain geometry IS, and where certain boundary conditions (i.e. driving points) are known. This is of great interest in antenna problems.

Secondly, it would be very nice to see an introduction to numeric methods, particularly the way that Maxwells equations in their integral form can be converted to finite element messhes - and likewise the differential form to seeds for Runga-Kutter type methods.

I love this kind of material with a vengeance, since I was lucky enough to find a copy of J. Strattons book in my Uncles library and one fine summers holiday, to get into this subject, purely for it's own sake. I remember acutely the feeling of discovery, and wonder at all the surprising complexity - and the years later, finding more of it. I realize this stuff is terribly hard, but it is truly wonderful, and the great shock of discovery (the "aha" point) is as good as anything else I can recall... Don't read this for a job, read it for it's own sake and enjoy the ride!