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Questions for those who know electromagnetism better than I do

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Slartibartfast:

--- Quote from: rstofer on August 24, 2021, 05:23:25 am ---I will take the opportunity to avoid Maxwell's Equations at every opportunity.
--- End quote ---

That won't be difficult, as pretty much all cases where they are analytically solvable are covered in literature, and all other cases need numerical methods (simulation) to solve.


--- Quote --- but the math can get really ugly.
--- End quote ---

I guess you just haven't seen ugly math. ;) Dealing with Maxwell's equations is a treat compared to some stuff in General Relativity, or even worse, Quantum Field Theory.

But, yes, high school math is not sufficient to solve Maxwell's equations.

bsdphk:

--- Quote from: rstofer on August 20, 2021, 03:27:51 am ---Three people in history have understood Maxwell's Equations:  Maxwell, Feynman and Einstein.

--- End quote ---

Just because you do not grok them, does not mean that only card-carrying geniuses can.

There are lots of non-nobel-laurates who have done amazing things with Maxwells Equations, for one thing Bell Labs where knee-deep in the stuff for 60 years.

Here is a random example: https://archive.org/details/bstj40-1-233/mode/2up

rstofer:

--- Quote from: Slartibartfast on August 24, 2021, 09:00:13 am ---
--- Quote from: rstofer on August 24, 2021, 05:23:25 am ---I will take the opportunity to avoid Maxwell's Equations at every opportunity.
--- End quote ---

That won't be difficult, as pretty much all cases where they are analytically solvable are covered in literature, and all other cases need numerical methods (simulation) to solve.


--- Quote --- but the math can get really ugly.
--- End quote ---

I guess you just haven't seen ugly math. ;) Dealing with Maxwell's equations is a treat compared to some stuff in General Relativity, or even worse, Quantum Field Theory.

But, yes, high school math is not sufficient to solve Maxwell's equations.

--- End quote ---

I took that Field Theory class in '73.  No computers, no plotters, no calculators, if numbers were used so were slide rules.  Everything was a handwave and all that was presented were endless equations.  I still have the book but it hasn't gotten a lot of reading time over the decades.  I noticed the Bell Labs paper had not a single graph, chart or plot.  Just endless equations.  Not my cup of tea but it was written in 1961.  Tools just weren't as sophisticated.

Breaking up the Bell system was a huge mistake.  Bell Labs was a national treasure.  Now owned by Nokia...  Eleven Nobel Prize winners worked for Bell Labs.

There's a reason I concentrated on digital in grad school.

mawyatt:

--- Quote from: rstofer on August 24, 2021, 05:46:33 pm ---Breaking up the Bell system was a huge mistake.  Bell Labs was a national treasure.  Now owned by Nokia...  Eleven Nobel Prize winners worked for Bell Labs.

--- End quote ---

I've always considered breaking up of Bell Labs as one of the greatest blunders of all time. Recall a comment by the USG about this, saying "don't worry our nationals labs will continue with all the research!!", yeah right :P

Best,

mawyatt:
Isn't Oliver Heavyside credited with consolidating Maxwell's works into what today we refer to as "Maxwell's Equations"?

I took Fields and Waves long ago and recall we used this conductive paper which we painted conductors on. This was basically a type of analog simulation where you could measure and plot the equipotential field lines using a VOM and power supply. This was the same time when we were designing hybrids using Rubylith and an Exacto knife ::)

Best,

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