Book Description

The present text is intended as an introduction to electromagnetics and computation of electromagnetic fields. While many texts on electromagnetics exist, the subject of computation of electromagnetic fields is nonnally not treated or is treated in a number of idealized examples, with the main emphasis on development of theoretical relations. "Why another book on Electromagnetics?" This is perhaps the first question the reader may ask when opening this book. It is a valid question, because among the many books on Electromagnetics some are excellent. We have two answers to this question, answers that have motivated the writing of this book. The first concerns the method of presentation of Electromagnetism. Generally, in classical books the material is presented in the following sequence: electrostatics, magnetostatics, magnetodynamics, and wave propagation, using integral fonns of the field equations. As a primary effect of this presentation, the reader is led to think that the knowledge of this science is synonymous to memorizing dozens offonnulas. Additionally, an impression that there is no finn connection between these equations lingers in the reader's mind since at each step new postulates are added, seemingly unrelated to previous material. Our opinion is, and we shall try to convey this to the reader, that the Electromagnetic formalism is extremely simple and based on very few equations. They are the four "Maxwell equations" which include practically all the existent relationships between the electromagnetic quantities. The only additional relationships that need be considered is the Lorentz force and the material constitutive relations.