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Any advice for studying electromagnetism?

Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2017 3:19 pm
by gecko428
I'm currently studying for the April Physics GRE, but I'm having a lot of trouble with the electromagnetism section. Electromagnetism was never my strong suit, and while I definitely learned it I'm having trouble remembering most of it.

Anyone have any tips or resources for studying this part of the GRE?

Re: Any advice for studying electromagnetism?

Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2017 3:28 pm
by ndrach
If you dont already have it, get Conquering the Physics GRE. They have a fairly comprehensive overview of all the E&M you'll need for the GRE

Re: Any advice for studying electromagnetism?

Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2017 3:56 pm
by Qwaps
Relearn some things on radiation caused by accelerated charges & review the Larmor formula in wikipedia. Other than that, be sure to understand the different boundary conditions for electric and magnetic fields (permittivity and permeability formulas) and what they imply for electromagnetic waves bounding off perfect conductors. That should do it for the most technical part of E&M.

Re: Any advice for studying electromagnetism?

Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2017 9:10 pm
by ebmuzik
ndrach wrote:If you dont already have it, get Conquering the Physics GRE. They have a fairly comprehensive overview of all the E&M you'll need for the GRE
There are a lot of amazon reviews of this text saying that it was pretty useless and didn't apply very well to the Physics GRE. Having not taken the PGRE and only a quick look at the book's contents, what do you think?

Re: Any advice for studying electromagnetism?

Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2017 9:12 pm
by tooterfish
ebmuzik wrote:
ndrach wrote:If you dont already have it, get Conquering the Physics GRE. They have a fairly comprehensive overview of all the E&M you'll need for the GRE
There are a lot of amazon reviews of this text saying that it was pretty useless and didn't apply very well to the Physics GRE. Having not taken the PGRE and only a quick look at the book's contents, what do you think?
Really? Conquering was the only book I actually found useful. The rest were garbage.

Re: Any advice for studying electromagnetism?

Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2017 10:37 pm
by ndrach
ebmuzik wrote:
ndrach wrote:If you dont already have it, get Conquering the Physics GRE. They have a fairly comprehensive overview of all the E&M you'll need for the GRE
There are a lot of amazon reviews of this text saying that it was pretty useless and didn't apply very well to the Physics GRE. Having not taken the PGRE and only a quick look at the book's contents, what do you think?
I think a lot of the reviews are referring to the first edition which supposedly has a lot of errors in the problem solutions. I think almost all of these were corrected in the second edition. But either way, it gives a really concise review of all the subjects on the PGRE, and I dont think I saw any question on any of the practice exams or the October 2016 exam that was about a topic not covered in CtPGRE