Study Materials on Classical Electrodynamics

Introduction:

Mechanics tells us how a system will behave when subjected to a given force. There are four forces in nature known (presently) to us. If we arrange them in order of decreasing strength, they would be:

1. Strong nuclear force
2. Electromagnetic force
3. Weak nuclear force, and
4. Gravitational force

We have often thought about questions, like: Where is friction? Where is the "normal" force that keeps us from falling through the floor? Where are the chemical forces that bind molecules together? Where is the force of impact between two billiard balls? The answer is that all these forces are electromagnetic.

A Short Break-Down of Maxwell's Equations

Maxwell's equations are used describe electricity and magnetism. The first two tell us about electric and magnetic effects, but the last two are the most important because they unite electricity and magnetism; hence, “electromagnetism". Their initial state are integrals in the form of differential equations in which you NEED to actually learn about how those animals are derived into standard form because they might not make any sense to you now. However, we can peek into what these equations mean. Differential equations break down into functions. They are basically relations where big functions spit out smaller functions and yield general solutions, and with a little more work, particular solutions. These relations basically state that moving charges generate magnetic fields and changing magnetic fields create changing electric fields.

A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field is the third of James Clerk Maxwell's papers regarding electromagnetism, published in 1865. It is the paper in which the original set of four Maxwell's equations first appeared. The concept of displacement current, which he had introduced in his 1861 paper On Physical Lines of Force, was utilized for the first time, to derive the electromagnetic wave equation. But now for the details…