Fundamentals of Applied Electromagnetics (6th Edition) Reviews
August 22, 2010 by admin
Filed under Electromagnetism
Fundamentals of Applied Electromagnetics (6th Edition)
Bridging the gap between electric circuits and electronmagnetics, Ulaby’s book leads users from familiar concepts into more advanced topics and applications. Earlier and heavier emphasis placed upon dynamics, permits coverage of practical applications in communication systems, radar, optics and solid state computers.FEATURES/BENEFITS * NEW–Over 370 chapter-end problems. * Offers users more opportunities to practice applications, and test their understanding of chapter concepts. * NEW–Accompa
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(out of 22 reviews)
List Price: $ 152.00
Price: $ 134.06
Review by Karl Becker for Fundamentals of Applied Electromagnetics (6th Edition)
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Electromagnetics book
The lightest textbook in my backpack, but certainly not the emptiest. This high information-density volume contains a wealth of knowledge, examples, and fairly readable text about the subject – and the CD is actually helpful!
At the beginning of the semester I had no idea what material the electromagnetics class consisted of, but now at the end I can look back and see a large number of topics presented in a fairly logical progression. The book’s modus operandi is: teach/review the underlying math concept, then use that math to tackle an electromagnetics problem. I enjoyed this approach a lot, though I agree with my professor that the order of presentation is a little questionable. We shuffled between chapters 3 and 4 so as not to dwell on pure math as much and instead deal with physical, practical problems. For example, instead of learning both divergence and curl simultaneously, we first learned divergence and then used it solve some problems involving Electric fields. Then we went back, learned curl, and applied it to different problems.
I was overwhelmed with the sheer variety of topics covered in this course. There seemed to be too many ways to do problems, and I couldn’t get a good feel for when to use which method. The book’s examples and explanations helped for homework sets, but come test time I usually knew three ways to solve it but wasn’t sure which way would produce the proper result. In an hour testing situation, I don’t have time to try out all three ways on every problem!
There must be a way to teach these concepts in a more targeted method, but I don’t know how. I feel I have a good knowledge of the material from the book, though, and the CD’s examples were very good. The CD showed step-by-step work for problems from the text, and had its own examples not in the book that did a good job demonstrating a concept. Don’t throw away the CD!
The svelte size of this book impresses me, because it shows the author cared enough to trim his wordage to a reasonable level. This should keep students happy, both in their backpacks and their studying.
Review by physics major for Fundamentals of Applied Electromagnetics (6th Edition)
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Good coverage of the basic concepts of E+M. I found this text very useful as a backup for Griffiths E+M (standard undergrad text for physics majors). The math is simple (not a legendre polynomial in sight) and the concepts are clear. The coverage of static fields in materials is especially easy to understand. You’re not going to find the dielectric tensor covered here, just the basics layed out in an intuitive format.
Review by I. Gurin for Fundamentals of Applied Electromagnetics (6th Edition)
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The text is difficult to follow. The short-range organization is quite good, but the long-range organization is weak. Go to the next page and you will likely have a hard time figuring out how the material there relates to what you were just reading. Many good lectures use this kind of structure, but I find that it does not make a good textbook.
The text lacks coherent derivations. Ulaby just throws equations at you without linking them together strongly. For instance, the input impedance of a transmission line with an arbitrary load (arguably the most important relation in the entire chapter on transmission lines) is derived piecemeal over the course of several sections. The derivation really isn’t hard, though – it could easily have been done in two pages. Ulaby does put nice blue boxes around the particularly important equations, but that doesn’t help much.
I found the treatment too simple for an upper-division course. Ulaby “misses the forest for the trees” by dwelling on details that should be simple to an upper-division engineering student.
Review by nebraskann for Fundamentals of Applied Electromagnetics (6th Edition)
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…this book is a great investment. Ulaby is kind enough to cover the math – THEN the subject, which unless you’re proficient in vector calc, will be important. There are examples – they have answers! This is a wonderful place to start your journey into electromagnetics, particularly if you learn through doing. I really came to understand Maxwell’s equations through this book. The only downside (if you could call it that) is the lack of theory, but don’t worry – that’ll come. You may not be able to derive Maxwell’s equations but you can use’m!
Review by denton for Fundamentals of Applied Electromagnetics (6th Edition)
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After reading through all the reviews and quickly attempting to discern the background of each reviewer through contextual clues, it has reinforced the idea that physics majors hate this book and engineers enjoy it.
Speaking as a prior physics major and now currently an EE major, I have seen both types of texts. A dynamics book would cover the subject with much less explanation (while allowing more critical thought, although requiring a much closer reading) and leave it up to the reader to fill in the pieces. A great exercise in the critical thinking physics majors need.
Engineers need to know the facts and how to approach the problems to get a meaningful result and this is exactly what the book provides. I was bothered by the presentation in this regard having used physics texts but I have seen much much worse.
Like the title of the book says, its applied fundamentals of emag and that is exactly what is laid out in the text.