This is a rather broad question. Does anyone know of good video lectures for graduate level classical electrodynamics?
4 Answers
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My understanding of Graduate Level is an overlap between JD Jackson's Classical electrodynamics, Landau's Electrodynamics of continuous media and Landau's Classical Theory of fields. Unfortunately, there isnt much video material out there, which is justifiable because there is no great pedagogical need here. If you understand Griffith's level electrodynamics the Jackson's book is an advanced methods to solve sophisticated problems book. Which is best learnt by doing problems.
ALthough I am not greatly impressed, this is a set of video lectures that treats Landau and Jackson as textbooks.
http://vubeam.pa.msu.edu/lectures/phy962/962d/electrodynamics/
It might be worthwhile to have a look at Leonard Susskind's lecture on classical electrodynamics and classical theory of fields in the special relativity module.
http://www.cosmolearning.com/video-lectures/electrodynamics/
If you're looking for companion notes, then these lecture slides would help you a lot more specifically with understanding the material presented in Jackson, I found it really helpful.
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$\begingroup$ Straton's electromagnetic theory is very good. $\endgroup$– user5402Commented Oct 27, 2013 at 18:39
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$\begingroup$ the vubeam link is broken. Could you please help us by providing an updated link? $\endgroup$ Commented Mar 31, 2020 at 3:51
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$\begingroup$ @AshwinBalaji You can access the vubeam lectures using waybackmachine. I'm proving the link here, make sure to download the video lectures. web.archive.org/web/20100618123419/http://vubeam.pa.msu.edu/… $\endgroup$ Commented Sep 8, 2020 at 5:00
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The above link has a list of videos for the Graduate Level Electrodynamics course. But it is more of the Classical Theory of Fields by Landau and the sections from Electromagnetics in Continuous Media is not present. Still this course deals with Gauges, Green functions, Scattering, Diffraction and Covariant Formulation (a.k.a. tensor formulation of Maxwell Equations). I haven't looked at complete playlist but this is a good one to go for.
They even provided a YouTube playlist link for easy streaming!! Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLuiPz6iU5SQ9d1uu1NrVO2BmCuyfddILt&v=LPnlqV5dGVI
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You may try this sequence of 36 MIT lectures by Walter Lewin:
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-02-electricity-and-magnetism-spring-2002/video-lectures/
I would guess that at the end, they're undergraduate lectures - but if it is true, I would find it natural because there is nothing such as "universal graduate classical electromagnetism". The general shared material of classical electromagnetism belongs to the undergraduate curriculum. Graduate students may also learn classical electromagnetism but it must not be the basic or universal material but rather some "twist" that is appropriate for a narrower physics discipline that is still actively evolving.
Classical electromagnetism was researched mainly in the 19th century and as a general research subject, it's not really alive today. There are related active fields of research but they're not "just classical electromagnetism".
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6$\begingroup$ Well, you do not normally come across Green functions, Legendre polynomials or Spherical harmonics that you see in Jackson in Undergraduate courses. It would be nice if there are good lectures on those. I have found lectures on other subjects like Quantum Mechanics and Statistical Mechanics, but nothing on ENM so far. $\endgroup$– EnderCommented May 4, 2011 at 13:33
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2$\begingroup$ Electricity and Magnetism, at the level of Jackson's textbook, was a standard required first-year graduate course at Berkeley when I was there in the 1990s. My impression from talking to other US-trained physicists is that the same is true at many universities. So graduate-level classical electromagnetism has a perfectly clear meaning to me. $\endgroup$– Ted BunnCommented May 4, 2011 at 17:32
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1$\begingroup$ Walter Lewin indeed has some great lectures on physics, but those are definitely for undergraduate students. And most universities are learning (undergraduate) from Jackson. @ user2146: I'm an undergrad student and we have studied everything you mentioned, so you cannot just say that only grad level electrodynamics deals with that ;) $\endgroup$– dingo_dCommented May 5, 2011 at 12:06
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3$\begingroup$ Jackson at undergraduate level? jeez what university do you go to? $\endgroup$– EnderCommented May 6, 2011 at 4:28
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1$\begingroup$ @Ender @Ted Bunn: Yes. That said, I wish we would get away from teaching graduate E&M and move on to a class on Classical field theory, which is most of what you're actually teaching in that class--the mathematics to do classical field theory. You don't need the complications of a vector field to learn how to use Green's functions--you can just solve a scalar field equation, and then generalize to a vector field. And you could introduce students to spinors, and so on and so on. $\endgroup$ Commented May 6, 2011 at 14:54
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With people looking into sublimation and ionic dynamics someone might see this and use only the modern sources. Yet most of the research was done based on an earlier book. When working with maser's, isopropenal methante based reactors, I often had to turn to Julius Robert Oppenheimer work. Some things are not covered as they were discovered after he died. For fundamentals in how ions and electrons work there is not a better starting point.
Lectures on Electrodynamics (Documents on Modern Physics) Julius Robert Oppenheimer Series: Documents on Modern Physics Hardcover: 174 pages Publisher: Gordon & Breach Science Pub (June 1, 1970) Language: English ISBN-10: 0677401302 ISBN-13: 978-0677401300 Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
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3$\begingroup$ Note that OP is asking about "video lectures for graduate level classical electrodynamics". $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 12, 2017 at 22:57