Electricity and Magnetism

This is the best freshman E&M text of all time -- provided that the class consists of students ready to handle the material at this level. Although the necessary tools of vector calculus are introduced from scratch, I doubt that most students would be able to get up to speed unless they had already had vector calculus or were at least taking it concurrently.

The best known innovation of this book was the presentation of magnetism as a consequence of relativity. The book assumes you've already learned special relativity. (There is an appendix on SR in the 3rd edition, but realistically that wouldn't be sufficient.)

I ordered a copy of the 3rd edition ($76), and compared it side by side with my disintegrating but much-loved copy of the 1965 1st edition. The price is amazingly reasonable compared to the kind of exploitative prices you see these days for textbooks.

One thing I'd never noticed before is that the 1st edition has a notice on its copyright page saying that it's available for royalty-free use after 1970. (It was an NSF-sponsored project.) So theoretically it's legal to scan it and put it on the web for free. However, what I find when I look around on the web is people illegally making the 2nd edition available through sleazy file-sharing sites.

The most important change is the switch from cgs to SI units. Three cheers. Without this change the book would have stayed in the ghetto forever.

The 3rd edition is almost twice the bulk of the 1st. This is mostly because there are far more problems, and many of them have complete solutions in the back of the book. This is a great new feature.

There is also an applications section at the end of every chapter.

For the most part, though, it's exactly the same text with only a very few minor changes here and there. The line art is mostly the same. The graphic design isn't as nice as in the 1st edition, which often used gray backgrounds on the figures, with a full bleed. In the 3rd edition, the figures often aren't sufficiently clearly divided from the text, and the effect is extremely ugly.

Purcell takes an unconventional approach in this book. Most of the electromagnetics is derived from three laws in this book: Coulomb's law, charge invariance, and special theory of relativity. This approach is especially beautiful and fruitful as the reader can make deep connections between electricity and magnetism. Yet, the book is easy to digest as most of the material is explained over experiments with very useful illustrations. The clarity and precise language with which the material is presented almost qualifies the text for bedtime reading. Finally, each chapter ends with practical applications of the topics covered.

Text from a Nobel Laureate. What a privilege that we own to be able to not only read it but to study seriously from it.

First of all, this book is deep. You need to be very potent in advanced Maths (Vector analysis) & Physics (Special Relativity) to be able to discover the beauty of EM theory that Purcell presents in this remarkable book.

This book tells you that:

1. Magnetic force is actually electric force caused by relative movement of charged particles. (You need to learn Special Relativity before you can understand Chap 5)

2. How to calculate magnetic field using vector potential( just in a similar way that we use to calculate electric field using scalar potential). If you want to know how to derive Biot Savart Law, which Halliday's Physics wont even bother, you will find it in Chap 6.

3. Both integral and differential form of Maxwell equations (in terms of vector operators, e.g. G.D.C.-- Gradient, Divergence and Curl)

Well, the book is perfect of course. However, 3 months after buying it, I realize pages 567 to 588 are missing. Also, the book originally arrived with the hardcover corners wrapped. I expected top quality for the price I paid.

I prefer the 2nd edition, which is more compact and used cgs units. The 3rd edition with more exercises and SI units may be more useful for a conventional, university classroom course, but the 2nd edition is the one you would prefer to pull from your bookshelf to re-read a section of the theory, or for self-study.

I hope CUP continues to publish and sell both editions.

The reader should possess a good grasp of Calculus, including vector calculus, in order to follow the reasoning of the text. The "Excercises and Problems" sections at the end of each chapter were very helpful to me in grasping what was said in the previous chapter.

One of the best basic physics books I've read. I think if you want to learn "real" physics, you'd start with this book. It shows how the work is done in practice. I was particularly fond of the sections on the "proof(s)" of the Thevenin theorem. But one problem students in today's classroom might have with the book is the length of the verbal discussions. They'd say it was "wordy." This goes along with the pressure these students exert on instructors to do "formulaic" instruction: work a problem in class, give that problem as homework and ask some close variant on the exam. All this is very concise and "fair." Unfortunately, that's no way to learn the physics. My one criticism is that there is really no discussion of guided waves or propagation, or modes in a guide or cavity. I think the omission of heavy discussion of relativity was a positive. Instructors love that topic, as it (and quantum mechanics) form a large part of their research. But it is extraneous at this level of development. I think this text offers just the right amount of relativity discussion.

I would say this would make a great adjunct to Griffiths canonical textbook for undergraduate studies, rather than the main book. The reason is well documented elsewhere-but essentially this book assumes a working knowedge of vector calculus (product laws for instance) whereas Griffiths devotes a chapter to it.

Along with the Classical Mechanics book by the same author, this should be on the bookshelf of any college level physics student.

In your introductory EM course, this may seem a bit too much. But after reviewing the subject after you take upper division, you will see that this was actually amazing in detail as it takes from other subjects and combines all relevant information.

This book is very rigorous. The author demonstrates outstanding writing skills; the explanations are very clear and precise. Do your homework on vector calculus. There is hardly no review on the subject. The book jumps head first into vector calc., so if you're rusty on the subject I strongly recommend you review it, or have a calc. textbook at the ready. Sit back and enjoy the ride; this book is amazing.