- #1
ahsanxr
- 350
- 6
So I'll be taking undegrad E&M 1 next semester and was looking for a good book to prepare for it before the semester starts. People seem to like Griffiths and Purcell generally. Shwartz also seems to have some good reviews (and is quite cheap) on Amazon but I'm not quite sure what level it is intended to be .
I'd go with Griffiths but I was using his Quantum Mechanics book this semester and while I learned a decent amount from it, I wasn't a big fan of it. His usual way of approaching things seemed to be quickly introduce a topic, don't give any historical or practical motivation for it, give a half assed example and then throw crazy problems at you with just a lot of unnecessary algebra. If his E&M book is also like that then I'd rather use some other text. Purcell on the other hand was intended to be a "freshman E&M" book if I'm not incorrect.
Schwartz on the other hand seems to be a good book but it's focus seems to be more on relativistic E&M.
So which one do you guys think I should choose and start working through?
Also, it would be nice if you guys could recommend a good math book which goes over things like Complex Analysis, PDE's and topics like special functions. That's for a course called "PDE's w/ Applied Math".
I'd go with Griffiths but I was using his Quantum Mechanics book this semester and while I learned a decent amount from it, I wasn't a big fan of it. His usual way of approaching things seemed to be quickly introduce a topic, don't give any historical or practical motivation for it, give a half assed example and then throw crazy problems at you with just a lot of unnecessary algebra. If his E&M book is also like that then I'd rather use some other text. Purcell on the other hand was intended to be a "freshman E&M" book if I'm not incorrect.
Schwartz on the other hand seems to be a good book but it's focus seems to be more on relativistic E&M.
So which one do you guys think I should choose and start working through?
Also, it would be nice if you guys could recommend a good math book which goes over things like Complex Analysis, PDE's and topics like special functions. That's for a course called "PDE's w/ Applied Math".