Pros: wide coverage of classical E&M topics, considered the standard book on the subject
Cons: meant for the serious physics student - others will find it too difficult
The Bottom Line: Jackson is used to teach Electricity and Magnetism classes worldwide for one reason - it is the best book ever written on the subject.
quasar's Full Review: John David Jackson - Classical Electrodynamics
I have a shameful confession to make. I hope this doesn't make any of you think any less of me, but I simply cannot hold it in any longer. If I lose your respect, any semblance of social standing I had, and every last friend I have (all three of you) so be it. I must come clean.
I love mathematics. I adore differential equations. I hold Pascal's Triangle as the ultimate mecca of truth and beauty. Nothing makes me happier than a convoluted set of simultaneous equations just sitting there for the solving. What bliss to spend my days twisting numbers to my will, proving that one is indeed greater than zero, following geometric progressions to the point where they have no real effect anymore, bending equations to my will to prove or disprove physical principles.
I know you are all shocked beyond belief. I can hear you whispering among yourselves, pointing a finger my way and warning your children to stay away from the wierdo. Do not worry, I am used to such things. That is why I covered up my guilty pleasures once I left graduate school, letting them haunt my dreams as they used to fill my life. Sure, every once in a while I would go to the secret bookcase, the one filled with Goldstein and Ashcroft & Mermin and other tomes of higher learning that proclaim my love of mathematics and physics. Every so often I would even take a book off the shelf, caressing it with longing. But I dared not read it. For once immersed within that world any semblance of normalcy would be gone and I would be ostracized in this society of math haters. If only they would stop trying so hard and let themselves believe that math is fun they would see, and I could stop hiding my passion. No, the worst I ever did was lie in bed with a pad of paper stuffed under my pillow, writing out all of the possible combinations of digits up to n (where n progresses from 0 to whatever). This was safe, for if someone interrupted me, most of the dirty proof of my obsession was hidden under my pillow. Once I was done, I would burn my handiwork. Discovery was not very likely.
The other day my longing overcame my common sense and I *gasp* opened one of my long abandoned tomes. That was all it took. Every ounce of my geekiness rose to the surface and I was soon reading intently. I even picked up some paper and a pen and started working out some problems. Yep, I was a goner. Several hours later I looked up, cramps in my hand, notepad full. I hadn't felt so alive in years.
The book? Classical Electrodynamics by John David (J.D.) Jackson. That's right, the venerable textbook used in just about every graduate level Electricity and Magnetism class taught in the past thirty years. I can hear all of the physics students out there shrinking back in horror and nudging each other saying "Oh my god. She voluntarily opened Jackson. I wonder how much money I'd have to pay her to do my homework." Sorry guys, my days of working problems for grades are long past.
Math and science books are always called by their author's names rather than their titles, and so this book is known as Jackson. I have no idea why this is so, but it is a long standing tradition, one that I fell into while in college. If an author has written more than one book, then they are known by the color of their covers - for instance the black Sakurai book (Modern Quantum Mechanics) vs. the red one (Advanced Quantum Mechanics). Let's hope they never reprint the books with different colors or we'd all be lost. If you want to pretend to be a cool science geek, you must use this naming scheme. It is the main way we tell the real geeks from the geek wannabes (all six of them). Just this glimspe into my secret world is making your eyes glaze over, I can tell. Well, hold on. There is worse to come.
Jackson was originally published in 1962, with a second edition published in 1975. That is the edition I have. This edition has a bright red cover (but that doesn't really matter since there is only one Jackson). The end papers are filled with a mini table of contents that tells you where to find key material within such as Bessel functions and the expansion of spherical harmonics, formulas for different vector operations in various coordinate systems, vector formulas used for substitution and simplification, and basic identities of vector calculus. Ah, the stuff of which dreams are made.
The book itself contains an introduction, seventeen chapters, and several appendices. The material spans electrostatics, magnetostatics, time-varying fields, electromagnetic waves, wave guides, diffraction, plasma physics, scattering, special relativity, and collisions, with appendices on units and unit conversion. Very few classes cover the entire book, even though most classes last an entire year. In my undergraduate class, we used this book to supplement our primary textbook, so we covered bits and pieces. In my graduate E&M class, we covered everything from electrostatics through wave guides, then spent some time on how electromagnetism and special relativity intertwined. We skipped plasma physics and left scattering and collisions for classes in quantum mechanics (covered somewhat in general quantum mechanics and in great depth in my relativistic quantum mechanics class).
Chapters 1-4 cover electrostatics, or electric properties of non-moving charges. Starting with basics like Couloumb's law and Gauss' Law then moving into more advanced material like Green's Theorem and capacitance, the first chapter sets the groundwork for everything else in the book. Chapters 2 and 3 concentrate on a variety of boundary value problems while Chapter 4 covers multipoles and dialectrics.
Chapter 5 covers magnetostatics including Ampere's Law and boundary value problems. Chapter 6 covers the basics of time-varying fields including Maxwell's Equations, conservation of energy and momentum, and addresses the issue of whether magnetic monopoles can exist.
Chapters 7-9 cover more advanced wave properties and problems. Chapter 7 covers plane waves and wave propogation including polarization and propogation through different types of media. Chapter 8 covers wave guides and resonant cavities. Chapter 9 covers radiating systems, diffraction, and scattering.
Chapter 10 covers plasma physics, viscosity, and magnetic diffusion. Chapter 11 covers special relativity as it applies to electromagnetism including Lorentz transformations, invariance of charge, and covariance of electrodynamics. Chapter 12 covers the dynamics of relativistic particles and fields.
The final chapters, Chapters 13-17, cover collisions,radiation, and multipoles in detail. Chapter 13 covers collisions and scattering in more detail than chapter 9. Chapter 14 covers radiation of moving particles in more detail than that chapter. Chapter 15 covers radiation emitted during collisions. Chapter 16 covers multipole fields, and Chapter 17 covers radiadion damping and absorbtion of radiation by a bound system.
Ah, the math lover's dream book. In order to follow Jackson with any real understanding you must know vector calculus well. Matrix and tensor algebra is a great help as well, but not quite as oft-used. As will all real physics, the material covered here is really applied mathematics. All theory and ideas are backed by equations. We cannot see electrons or electromagnetic waves but we can describe them through mathematics. These mathematical descriptions are the basis for all theories we put forth about how the universe really works. It all comes back to mathematics. To understand the world around you, you must understand advanced mathematics.
I know I have lost whatever minimal respect I had previously earned with this horrifying confession. For that, I am sorry. But I could not hide any longer. My mathematical soul had to be set free. Today Jackson, tomorrow the Grand Unified Theory. What bliss.
Guilty Pleasures Writeoff
This review is part of the Guilty Pleasures Writeoff hosted by sampo24. Check out the other great participants:
The textbook, Classical Electrodynamics, by John David Jackson, available in Hardback. Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.. Edition: 3RD. ISBN1...More at Textbooks.com
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.