In college I had a calculus professor from Czechoslovakia. When we did not understand a concept he used to sigh and say "every child in my old country knows this"
I was proficient in the circuit theory classes but struggled in the E&M class. We had a student from Greece that was proficient in vector calculus and he soaked up the concepts like a sponge. He went on to design Microwave Antennas.
That was a long time ago.
Mike N2MS
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On 11/09/2023 5:56 PM EST Tom Lee <tomlee@...> wrote:
I think many students feel as you do. Part of the reason, I suspect, is
that most students don't study vector calculus first. Without that
background, Maxwell's equations seem to be written in hieroglyphics. And
if you aren't in the priestly class, then it all seems abstract and
arbitrary.
But if you start with the fundamental experiments of, say, Faraday and
Ampere and see how it all got started, then the intuition precedes the
math(s) and the beauty (and utility) of Maxwell's formulation (the
modern textbook version of which is actually more due to Heaviside and
Gibbs) emerges more naturally. Unfortunately, many E&M (S&M?) courses
present little or none of the history and jump straight to the equations.
Too bad, really.
--Tom
