Maxwell on the Electromagnetic Field A Guided Study |
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| Author:
| Simpson, Thomas |
| ISBN: | 978-0-8135-2362-0 |
| Publication Date: | Mar 1997 |
| Publisher: | Rutgers University Press
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| Book Format: | Hardback |
| List Price: | USD $50.00 |
Book Description:
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first, if you already know a bit about Maxwell's Equations and you want to learn something of the ways in which Maxwell (and indirectly, Faraday) thought about the subject as they developed their ideas, this is a very good book. Secondly, for those, like me, with a poor "intuition" about E & M, I think the book will sharpen our vision in a way that contemporary texts may not. The book makes clear that Faraday and Maxwell certainly stumbled along the way, and got some wrong notions...
More Descriptionfirst, if you already know a bit about Maxwell's Equations and you want to learn something of the ways in which Maxwell (and indirectly, Faraday) thought about the subject as they developed their ideas, this is a very good book. Secondly, for those, like me, with a poor "intuition" about E & M, I think the book will sharpen our vision in a way that contemporary texts may not. The book makes clear that Faraday and Maxwell certainly stumbled along the way, and got some wrong notions in their heads as they worked hard towards the truth. If you learn just from modern textbooks, you may get the false impression that the greats were infallible, and that you are somehow "foolish" if you either (a) just don't "see" it, or (b) waste your time trying to "see" it when "after all it's all about the mathematics anyway." Just watching Maxwell struggle to visualize what is going on gives me more courage in my efforts to visualize what is going on.