Customer Reviews

Introductory Electromagnetics

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Electromagnetism is a hard subject for many people, including myself. The best approach is to get a few good books on the subject rather than rely on one book. After doing a survey, I finally bought the following books suitable for my level: (i) Introductory Electromagnetics by Popovic and Popovic; (ii) Field and Wave Electromagnetics by Cheng; (iii) Electromagnetics with Applications by Kraus; (iv) Schaums Outline of Electromagnetics by Edminister. I give five stars to all these books. (There is another book which I will not review or identify, because it turned out to be unsatisfactory.)

I am reviewing these four books in one go because they are interrelated. Each of these book is strong in its own unique area.

Introductory Electromagnetics by Popovic and Popovic is the best of these book for gaining an intuitive understanding of the difficult subject of electromagnetism. Its clarity and elegance reminds me of Feynman's Lectures in Physics. Every chapter is a work of inspiration. The carefully chosen examples are designed to impart understanding of electromagnetic principles rather than calculation skills. The book is excellent for those who are new to the subject. It is also excellent for those who have already learned some electromagnetics, but who feel that their understanding is still shaky.

Field and Wave Electromagnetics by Cheng is the best of these books in terms of the mathematical development of electromagnetics. Although this approach may seem difficult at first glance, ironically the mathematical rigour makes the subject much easier to grasp. That is because mathematical precision goes a long way towards illuminating subtle principles of electromagnetism. As a result, this book, more so than any other book, has given me the confidence to handle the difficult subject of electromagnetism.

Electromagnetics With Application by Kraus is the least systematic of these books, with some of the discussions being disjoint and abrupt. It is, however, valuable for its interesting and practical examples. It is a must-have book for anyone who is serious about electromagnetism.

Schaums Outline of Electromagnetics, by Edminister, is an outstanding collection of problems and solutions, as well as summaries. It mirrors the excellence of Edminister's other Schaums Outline, namely, Electric Circuits.

In summary, these four books have different strengths, respectively the following: (i) intuitive development; (ii) systematic development; (iii) practical application; and (iv) problem solving. These books form an awesome quartet, covering all the bases, and will provide you with a good foundation for advanced studies. A useful supplement for these books is Schaums Mathematical Handbook of Formulas and Tables.

I am actively engaged in research in electromagnetics and
i have to admit this the first book i have seen managing
to simplify diffcult electromagnetic concepts.
It is a book maybe not for the beginner but for
somebody that wants to understand concepts as Maxwell equations
and resonators.

Though this text has a wealth of information, it is irresponsible to title it an "Introductory" text. Here at the University of Colorado, this is the text used for our first class on the subject, EM Fields and Waves. The title of this work certainly suggests that the material covered in the text is of an introductory nature, which is far from the truth. If you do decide to buy or use this text get use to two frustrating phrases. (1) "This example is left as an exercize," and (2) "It is not difficult to show..." I am sure to the author who has years of experience, the problems are trivial, but it is very difficult to learn anything by stating the solution through hand-waving rather than actual work. As an example, imagine you were to try to bake a cake and the recipe was written in the following manner: "With flour, sugar, and a few other ingredients that I haven't mentioned, it is not difficult to bake a cake." I have a feeling your cake would not turn out too good. Well, that is what I feel about my knowledge of the EM subject because of this text.

Even my fellow reviewer who gave this text a five star rating said this text is not for those who are not into magnetics 100%. Perhaps then it should not be an "introductory" text.

In short, this text may be a good reference for those who have been working on the material for years, but need a theoretical refresher course. However, if you are a student trying to learn the material and buying an introductory text, or a professor who is teaching a first or second year course stay away from this text at all cost.

The text is well written and organized. Ideas are explained assuming little prior knowledge of electromagnetics, hense the title "Introductory". Explains many concepts in electromagetics from an electrical engineering point of view (as opposed to the physicists). Tries to Bridge theory and practice somewhat, an element that is missing in other texts.

A much better indroductory text than I used at CU (Carl Johnk's), which was much more advanced (but good also).

This introductory text is strictly written for those who already possess a strong background in the field. The writing is poor (even for an engineering text), concepts are not fully expanded upon, formulas and general "look-up" concepts are nearly nonexistant, examples (which are few) cover only very general cases, and corresponding problems are disproportionally difficult. In many cases, examples are not worked, but instead contain the phrase, "It is left as an exercise for the reader to complete this example." As an analogy, imagine an example describing addition with the phrase, "It is left as an exercise for the reader to derive integration." A text must have the potential to be used as reference material, but because of the lack of concrete information and worked examples, this book has been robbed of that potential.

Just received this book and after opening the package I realized something was wrong. The cover is invert. By this I mean the first page of the book is glued to the inverted back cover. I will not return this item but it is a warning for future buyers that this book does not suffer a quality control after being bonded.

«Introductory Electromagnetics» is a book especially written for engineering students (electrical and electrotechnical) who are taking their first steps in the area. Overall, the book is carefully written, with every chapter featuring very good theoretical introductions that that make the reader feel confortable with the subjects being discussed and know what he's actually studying. The examples given everytime a new concept is introduced are also good and tend to be very down-to-earth and clear for the reader to understand.

Nevertheless, this book has a heavy downside, especially to the readers who are using it for, and as the author itself states on the preface, "an intermediate level one-semester textbook in electromagnetic fields": there are very few exercises and the ones that do feature in this book are not supplied with resolutions and not even solutions. In addiction to this, all examples tend to be theoretically good, but the authors try to bypass the mathematical part of the exercises, which don't make things any easy for the readers who are studying for an exam and need to know how a certain problem is solved (since electromagnetism tends to use very particular techniques to solve mathematical issues - especially integral equations - different than those learned in mathematical subjects that the readers probably have had before studying electromagnetism).

All in all, the book is theoretically very good and clear, but lacks the practical part of electromagnetism, essencial for problem solving (which is one of the main goals for the college student). Still, it's a good compliment for the students who have solved exercises elsewhere and use this book mainly to understand the theory behind electromagnetism.

I used this text for a sophomore-level introductory electromagnetics course and found it to be very difficult to learn from. There are few quality examples, and the ones that are present are largely explained by hand-waving and "for a solution, see the previous section" explanations (i.e. examples aren't fully worked out - they frequently refer you to a previous derivation). This book was, overall, a horrible experience. I would recommend just about any other highly-reviewed book on electromagnetics as a replacement.

This book is natural extension of prof. Popovic's masterpiece reference book "Basics of Electrotecnics", which has been studied with pleasure by the generations of electrical engineers in School of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade. This book is not for reader who is not 100% interested in magnetics, because, the focus of the book is not in providing a reader with basic understanding, but in sophisticating the fundamental knowledges which are assumed that reader alredy possess. Very dynamical and inspirating writting is just as expected from famous lecturer and inventor, prof. Popovic.

I do not recommend this textbook for the people who are willing to learn about electromagnetics. It's kind of easy to understand overall but for someparts the author introduced weird results without explaining how and where they come from. Also sometimes they tried to explain easy things by using their own words and it turns out it makes them worse. I do not see the continuity of the points through this whole book and it's not detail at all. For some students who have taken this before, it might be good summary book but it's not recommendable textbook for the beginners! If your instructors are planning to teach the course by using of this book, please stop them...