OMG TEH JACKSON!
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
got mine for $50 on Amazon
let's get this party started
let's get this party started
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
$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:
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.
Re: Or not
That was awesome!dlenmn wrote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T1aNg6v-L4
Anyone else start off their E&M class with Landau and Lifshitz and chapters 11&12 in Jackson?
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
For the record, ninjas > pirates.
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
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...
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...
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
The proliferation of solutions manuals on the internet has doubtless made problem sets from the book obsolete.
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
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.zxcv wrote:from Jackson's own institution, we aren't actually doing any problems out of the text.
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.twistor wrote:The proliferation of solutions manuals on the internet has doubtless made problem sets from the book obsolete.
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.
- Kaiser_Sose
- Posts: 48
- Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2008 11:20 pm
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
I have to concur with you on the Kittel book. Almost totally unreadable unless you already understand the material.
Dur !
Dur !
- WontonBurritoMeals
- Posts: 102
- Joined: Sat Feb 23, 2008 9:43 pm
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
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
May the wind be always at your back,
-WontonBurritoMeals
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
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.
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
Can't I get one from Griffiths instead. He's so much more of a badass.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.
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
[quote]Anyone else start off their E&M class with Landau and Lifshitz and chapters 11&12 in Jackson?[/quote]
Cornell style.
Cornell style.
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- Posts: 10
- Joined: Tue Dec 09, 2008 7:31 am
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
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 ...
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 ...
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
OMG TEH JACKSON.... IS OVER!!!!!!!!
Sorry, I just got out of my final... time to get drunk!
Sorry, I just got out of my final... time to get drunk!
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
blanked
Last edited by a13ean on Wed Aug 14, 2013 11:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
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.
Any concepts that took a while? Any advice on picking up those concepts.
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
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.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.
- WhatCanYouDoFermi?
- Posts: 49
- Joined: Thu Jan 08, 2009 12:32 pm
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
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?
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
Thats the basic physics evolution.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?
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.
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
i can just say from sitting in grad EM... it is basically finding the green function for the weirdest geometries possiblecato88 wrote:Thats the basic physics evolution.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?
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.
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
If by weird geometries you mean rectangular, spherical, and cylindrical....Helio wrote:i can just say from sitting in grad EM... it is basically finding the green function for the weirdest geometries possible
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.
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
more like combinations of those, plus different potentials... it looks messy after a whilegrae313 wrote:If by weird geometries you mean rectangular, spherical, and cylindrical....Helio wrote:i can just say from sitting in grad EM... it is basically finding the green function for the weirdest geometries possible
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.
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
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.
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
Do you have any introductory solid state books that you would recommend?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.
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
Just dive in with Ashcroft/Mermin. That book is real good.
- kobayashi_maru
- Posts: 9
- Joined: Sat May 10, 2008 1:53 am
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
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).dlenmn wrote:Just dive in with Ashcroft/Mermin. That book is real good.
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.
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
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.
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
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.
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
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.
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
OMG TEH JACKSON...HE'S DEAD.
I know, I'm a little late, but I forgot about this thread.
I know, I'm a little late, but I forgot about this thread.
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- Posts: 59
- Joined: Mon Nov 02, 2009 4:51 pm
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
dear Jackson,
suckit.
love,
Ultraballer2000
suckit.
love,
Ultraballer2000
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
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 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.
- Dorian_Mode
- Posts: 68
- Joined: Wed Mar 30, 2011 6:17 am
Re: OMG TEH JACKSON!
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.