3310 textbook suggestions

There are many introductory E&M texts out there. If you're having difficulties their different styles, perspectives, additional problems and examples may be very useful to you. Here are just a few suggestions:

- Pollack and Stump, "Electromagnetism" (This is at the level of Griffiths, and covers the same material in much the same order. It is probably the 2nd most commonly used book for courses like 3310 across the country (after Griffiths). It's a little more mathematically focused (you'll find some derivations here that Griffiths is a little casual about), and the authors often do a nicer job motivating the physics, bringing in more worked examples and some historical references. It uses the same units (MKS metric) as Griffiths. (Pollack is no relation to me - apparently he spells his name wrong :-)

-  Daniel Fleish, “A student’s Guide to Maxwell’s Equations”. A little paperback with very nice support for the conceptual underpinnings/ basic math and physics of E&M. It’s cheap to purchase, I’ve gotten a lot out of it.

- E. Purcell, Electricity and Magnetism, 2nd ed., McGraw-Hill, 1985. This is a great book for learning E&M. It was originally written in the 1960s for honors-level freshman courses (!)  but its treatment of the material is nearly as sophisticated as Griffiths’. (MKS units, like Griffiths).

- Feynman, Leighton, and Sands: "The Feynman Lectures on Physics, part II." (Part of a truly wonderful series of 3 "introductory" physics books, you should get a copy and read it!) Like Purcell, written in the '60s for freshmen at CalTech, it too covers much of the E&M from our 3310-3320 sequence. Feynman has amazing, brilliant insights into the physics and mathematics, this book can definitely help you make sense of the formalism we are learning!  (MKS units)

And if that's not enough, one more thought -

J. D. Jackson, Classical Electrodynamics, any edition. Higher-level (this is a grad text), and very heavy on the math. This book is so universal in first-year graduate courses that the course is usually just called “Jackson” rather than “E&M”. If you’re going to graduate school, you might as well buy it now and save a couple years’ book price inflation. (Gaussian units in old editions, but he switched to MKS in the 3rd edition).