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One early misconception I had about EM was that there were discrete 'lines' of force. I guess this either arose from iron filings experiments or from the way the diagrams of fields are (perhaps unavoidably) drawn. But now I know the fields are continuous.
Wait 'til you hear of quantum electrodynamics ;)
One early misconception I had about EM was that there were discrete 'lines' of force. I guess this either arose from iron filings experiments or from the way the diagrams of fields are (perhaps unavoidably) drawn. But now I know the fields are continuous.
One early misconception I had about EM was that there were discrete 'lines' of force. I guess this either arose from iron filings experiments or from the way the diagrams of fields are (perhaps unavoidably) drawn. But now I know the fields are continuous.
> But now I know the fields are continuous. Wait 'til you hear of quantum electrodynamics ;)
What is annoying though, it is the pervasive practice according to which some authors completely ignore H ("intensity of the magnetic field") while others pretend to know nothing (and nor should their students) about B ("magnetic induction").
Somewhat less annoyingly, the teachers of electromagnetism rarely introduce the students to the formulation in terms of differential forms, which many consider a better, more intuitive way of doing electrodynamics compared to vector analysis (which student still should learn, of course).
Nearly all my comments so far are about books but Jackson's Classical Electrodynamics provided a turning point in my understanding of E&M.... and took over a year (of pain) to get through.
On the other end of the 'spectrum', Griffiths Intro to Electrodynamics is extremely readable and just as good.
One early misconception I had about EM was that there were discrete 'lines' of force. I guess this either arose from iron filings experiments or from the way the diagrams of fields are (perhaps unavoidably) drawn. But now I know the fields are continuous.
I'm still confused by the notion of line/field/flux density. That said, I found a few books to read about that.