The Theory of the Electromagnetic Field
The Theory of the Electromagnetic Field (Th-EMField)), which treats electromagnetic theory at the intermediate to advanced undergraduate level, differs from many texts on the subject in several ways, all of which are described in the Preface and Introduction that can be downloaded by opening items below. In particular, this text incorporates a larger than typical focus on the use of computational tools for addressing problems in electromagnetic theory. To the standard topics in electromagnetic theory, Th-EMField adds an introduction to several procedures for graphing scalar fields of one, two, and three variables, for mapping vector fields, and for solving ordinary and partial differential equations. Examples of the use of these procedures are implemented in several different computational tools (IDL, MATLAB, OCTAVE, PYTHON, MAXIMA, MAPLE, MATHEMATICA)—though particular versions of Th-EMField will typically include only a subset of these tools. The text simply uses these tools; it assumes that readers are already familiar with at least the basic syntax of the available tools. At Lawrence, explicit instructionm to the capabilities of these tools is incorporated in the course Computational Mechanics, which is a required prerequisite for the courses in electromagnetic theory, and uses the author's text Computation and Problem Solving in Undergraduate Physics, which is downloadable from the link below.
Th-EMField has been written by Professor David M. Cook, Department of Physics at Lawrence University, a nationally-ranked liberal arts college and Conservatory of Music with about 1500 students located in Appleton, Wisconsin. Its drafting began in the late 1960s. The first edition was published by Prentice-Hall in 1975 and republished by Dover in 2003. Shortly after the 1975 publication of the first edition, Professor Cook began drafting the second edition, with the particular objective of increasing the computational components. The second edition has evolved significantly over the past two or three decades and was used for a couple of dozen offerings of two courses (Intermediate Electromagnetic Theory, Advanced Electromagnetic Theory) at Lawrence. Since his retirement in June, 2008, Professor Cook has continued to refine this text.
Preface, Introduction, and Table of Contents
Other contributions by Professor Cook:
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