from Hacker News

Electromagnetic Waves and Antennas (2016)

by exar0815 on 5/28/24, 9:02 PM with 16 comments

  • by violet13 on 5/28/24, 11:51 PM

    Let me say that I really like that this is a free textbook, and I realize it's a textbook for EE students, not the general public.

    That said, it bums me out a bit when textbooks are written in this style. It's essentially a big data dump of formulas that doesn't explain the "why".

    I know that classical magnetism doesn't have a good explanation beyond "it is like that because that's how it is." But at the very least, the formulas are derived from and relate to empirical observations. You don't teach chemistry by treating it as a set of math axioms, right?

    "The Art of Electronics" doesn't exactly handhold you through the basics, but it takes a far more accessible approach to EE once you grasp the basics. And their secret is real-world examples, anecdotes, and so on.

  • by puzzledobserver on 5/29/24, 4:33 AM

    My last physics class was on electromagnetism. We used Griffiths' textbook. Some 17 years ago.

    I briefly glanced at page 2 of this book, where the author describes the qualitative mechanism by which Maxwell's equations give rise to propagating waves. This is a beautiful picture, and led to an aha moment.

  • by euroderf on 5/29/24, 1:26 PM

    In a course on electromagnetic fields & waves way back in the late 1970s, we dreamed of having our lessons illustrated with snazzy animations to help us visualize how things worked.

    Do such animated lessons now exist, online & free ?

  • by dreamcompiler on 5/29/24, 10:49 PM

  • by penguin_booze on 5/29/24, 2:16 PM

    > The requested page could not be found.

    Am I the only one seeing this?

  • by lurking15 on 5/29/24, 12:24 AM

    I had him as a Matlab professor