Physics GRE Discussion Forums

yay gradschool

got mine for $50 on Amazon

let's get this party started

$20 (practically new) from someone who decided to switch to math after taking Jackson.
As much as we all hate teh JacXXoR, it's probably the single most useful physics course you will ever take. Most departments make you take it because it's more useful for both theorists and experimentalists than any other physics course they'll take.

IMO, Jackson >> Griffiths.
Also, Landau & Lifshitz > >Jackson.
and, Pirates >> Ninjas >> All E&M textbooks.

On a related note, here's what wikipedia has to say about John David Jackson:

The name Jackson is infamous amongst physics graduate students who are, at many institutions, required to take an advanced course in theoretical electrodynamics taught out of J. D. Jackson's text Classical Electrodynamics. The course is well-known for its difficult homework problems and is referred to simply as “Jackson” in the field of physics. Many physicists who do not directly pursue research in the field of theoretical electrodynamics regard the Jackson course as a rite of passage in obtaining a Ph.D.

dlenmn wrote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T1aNg6v-L4

That was awesome!


Anyone else start off their E&M class with Landau and Lifshitz and chapters 11&12 in Jackson?

For the record, ninjas > pirates.

Yeah, we're in the midst of Jackson's chapters 11 and 12, too. E&M is far cooler than I expected it could be.

Odd thing: from Jackson's own institution, we aren't actually doing any problems out of the text. Our professor is writing all of his own problem sets, which if interesting are not very hard. Kind of disappointing...

The proliferation of solutions manuals on the internet has doubtless made problem sets from the book obsolete.

zxcv wrote:from Jackson's own institution, we aren't actually doing any problems out of the text.

If you ever see Charles Kittel wandering around Berkeley, please flip him the finger. He deserves to be banished from the physics community after writing that atrocious solid state book, regardless of anything good he may have accomplished.

twistor wrote:The proliferation of solutions manuals on the internet has doubtless made problem sets from the book obsolete.

That's one of the reasons I'm glad we're not given course grades, especially since we're responsible for the prelim and general exams, which will test the same material and be plenty difficult themselves.

I haven't read far in Jackson yet, and I don't expect it to be easy, but I'm actually very pleased with some of the preliminary things in the text. Someone FINALLY explained to me precisely what it means to ground a conductor, and how it can be accomplished (*experimentally) to arbitrary precision. Previously, all profs would say to me is V=0, which is hardly satisfactory. They'd constantly say that grounding a circuit anywhere doesn't affect the circuit, but then i'd say what happens if you ground it in two places? They say then it gets shorted, so how can they say it's unaffected the first time?

Similarly for the grounded plane examples in Griffiths, does it matter where you ground the plane? Afterall if you ground it near the origin (which is what the diagrams for the problem often suggest), the ground wire itself will have a charge buildup that may affect the surroundings... etc... but anyway, all I'm saying is that Jackson's in depth analysis finally shed light on those matters. Also, he finally explained that Coulomb's law is indeed the underlying law of electrostatics, and that the Maxwell equations for div/curl of E were derived from it for solving problems where you don't know the charge distribution! And then he directly derived how the integral equation for V satisfies poisson's equation etc... So it looks like if I want to learn E&M once and for all, this is the right book.

I have to concur with you on the Kittel book. Almost totally unreadable unless you already understand the material.

Dur !

I mentioned Jackson to my professor after reading this thread. Turns out one of my labmates (one of the smartest guys I know) got a special T-shirt from Jackson. Which is cool.

May the wind be always at your back,
-WontonBurritoMeals

Indeed: the reason why I still care about grades in grad school is that if I get one of the top 2 grades in E&M, I get a T-shirt signed by J. D. Jackson himself.

zxcv wrote:Indeed: the reason why I still care about grades in grad school is that if I get one of the top 2 grades in E&M, I get a T-shirt signed by J. D. Jackson himself.

Can't I get one from Griffiths instead. He's so much more of a badass.

[quote]Anyone else start off their E&M class with Landau and Lifshitz and chapters 11&12 in Jackson?[/quote]

Cornell style.

haha, my first sem of grad school effectively kept this site off the radar, but even if it's more than two months late i will add my 2 cents:

panofsky & phillips, anyone? my prof is pro-practical uses of e&m (-> experimental over theoretical, and to him panofsky was god-like), but i hate this book. i actually prefer jackson (even though we also do problems from it, heh). so in comparison to jackson, we also began in the middle - not 11&12, though we were instructed by my mechanics prof to go there for relativity in lieu of goldstein. 11&12 are fodder for next semester, apparently.

did anyone else get a copy of jackson with the fuzzy mountains on the jacket? what's up with that? at least find a better (sharper) picture ...

OMG TEH JACKSON.... IS OVER!!!!!!!!

Sorry, I just got out of my final... time to get drunk!

blanked

Do you guys have any advice for preparing for using Jackson. What math techniques were common?
Any concepts that took a while? Any advice on picking up those concepts.

cato88 wrote:Do you guys have any advice for preparing for using Jackson. What math techniques were common?
Any concepts that took a while? Any advice on picking up those concepts.

Actually most of Jackson isn't that bad, I would just recommend Mathematica to save you hours of really gross algebra and ugly integrals. The part that gave me trouble was at the beginning of our course--we started from Landau and Lifshitz Classical Theory of Fields and CHs 11 and 12 in Jackson, which you probably won't do. If you anticipate covering this in your class, review (or teach yourself) tensor math/notation and relativity.

If grad EM isn't a requirement of your program, is it really necessary to take it or to read Jackson for your own benefit and personal enlightenment? I feel that having gone through all of Griffiths in gory detail I thoroughly understand the subject and I wonder what the next level up of classical EM contains that I haven't already seen. Maybe I am just ignorant, but is it necessary for most research areas?

WhatCanYouDoFermi? wrote:If grad EM isn't a requirement of your program, is it really necessary to take it or to read Jackson for your own benefit and personal enlightenment? I feel that having gone through all of Griffiths in gory detail I thoroughly understand the subject and I wonder what the next level up of classical EM contains that I haven't already seen. Maybe I am just ignorant, but is it necessary for most research areas?

Thats the basic physics evolution.

a) learn something think you know it all
b) realize there is a whole lot you dont know
c) back to a)

applied to classical mechanics

a) Newtonian Mechanics
b)
c) Lagrangians Hamiltonians

Grad E&M seems to be required at pretty much every PhD program.

cato88 wrote:

WhatCanYouDoFermi? wrote:If grad EM isn't a requirement of your program, is it really necessary to take it or to read Jackson for your own benefit and personal enlightenment? I feel that having gone through all of Griffiths in gory detail I thoroughly understand the subject and I wonder what the next level up of classical EM contains that I haven't already seen. Maybe I am just ignorant, but is it necessary for most research areas?

Thats the basic physics evolution.

a) learn something think you know it all
b) realize there is a whole lot you dont know
c) back to a)

applied to classical mechanics

a) Newtonian Mechanics
b)
c) Lagrangians Hamiltonians

Grad E&M seems to be required at pretty much every PhD program.

i can just say from sitting in grad EM... it is basically finding the green function for the weirdest geometries possible

Helio wrote:i can just say from sitting in grad EM... it is basically finding the green function for the weirdest geometries possible

If by weird geometries you mean rectangular, spherical, and cylindrical....


grad e&m is not required here, and probably not necessary for my research. It depends on what you are interested in and where you go. Greens functions are important. I considered it a right of passage of sorts, and most of the 1st years were taking it, and I like E&M, so I went ahead and took it but I don't think it's essential for everybody.

grae313 wrote:

Helio wrote:i can just say from sitting in grad EM... it is basically finding the green function for the weirdest geometries possible

If by weird geometries you mean rectangular, spherical, and cylindrical....


grad e&m is not required here, and probably not necessary for my research. It depends on what you are interested in and where you go. Greens functions are important. I considered it a right of passage of sorts, and most of the 1st years were taking it, and I like E&M, so I went ahead and took it but I don't think it's essential for everybody.

more like combinations of those, plus different potentials... it looks messy after a while

I've noticed that only one semester is required for a lot of programs -- which seems to be the first six or so chapters of Jackson.

quizivex wrote:If you ever see Charles Kittel wandering around Berkeley, please flip him the finger. He deserves to be banished from the physics community after writing that atrocious solid state book, regardless of anything good he may have accomplished.

Do you have any introductory solid state books that you would recommend?

Just dive in with Ashcroft/Mermin. That book is real good.

dlenmn wrote:Just dive in with Ashcroft/Mermin. That book is real good.

I completely agree. I don't have the hate for Kittel that most people seem to, but I've been reading both Kittel and Ashcroft/Mermin on all the subjects we've done this semester, and A/M definitely gives a much more sophisticated and understandable explanation across the board (at least as far as I've gotten).

My strategy has been to read a chapter in Kittel straight through, without pausing to work through any of the derivations or anything. Then I'll read the corresponding chapters in Ashcroft/Mermin, paying attention to details and making sure I understand everything as well as I can. It's been working well so far.

Hey guys, I started sifting through Jackson about a week ago in prep for quals and EM next semester. Could anyone reccommend a companion text that might fill in a few of the subtler points of the derivations in Jackson? Some sections seem so logical and clear and then other sections I feel like he just writes down an equation and 2 sentances "explaining" it. I wish someone would publish an annotated version with notes and stuff in the margins.

slugger wrote:...other sections I feel like he just writes down an equation and 2 sentances "explaining" it.

Two whole sentences?! Usually he just writes "it is clear that..." or "it is trivial to show that..." and of course it's not at all clear or trivial.

No, i hear you...its a total pain, but is there really no one out there that knows of a nice little companion? The dover book by schwartz looked like it was pretty thorough in its derivations, especially in the relativistic stuff, but it looked like it was lacking in other more important topics (green functions didnt even appear in the index). Any help would be great.

OMG TEH JACKSON...HE'S DEAD.

I know, I'm a little late, but I forgot about this thread.

dear Jackson,

suckit.

love,

Ultraballer2000

Guys,

I found this Downfall parody video about how much Hitler hates Jackson EM book:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq2ToKN9hRo


Apparently, even he can't stand Jackson after one full semester of EM course.

I think I may be in the only grad E&M course that doesn't use Jackson. Our professor is a fan of Panofsky and Phillips, accompanied by about two reams worth of additional notes that he hands out over the course of the class. One thing Panofsky has going for it: that book is cheap.