mathematics

I orignially wrote a review for this book as an undergraduate. In that review, I credited Griffiths with a knack for presenting information in a clever and entertaining way. I still believe this is true. At the time, I also said that Griffiths included precise and complete examples. Looking back, I no longer believe this is true.

When I first started using this book, I was under the impression that Griffiths had discovered a method in the way of writing textbooks that was totally superior to all other authors of similar background. Now, after several years of using Griffiths as a reference, I find that his books serve as a wonderful resource for refreshing one's memory, however they lack a certain comprehensive quality that would make them a solid reference text. I am now a student of John David Jackson, that legendary author with the impossible text (Classical Electrodynamics), and the astounding thoroughness of his book dwarfs the Griffiths E&M text by comparison. Valuable information in the Griffiths text is often left as an exercise. This is very frustrating when one is searching for solutions to much more advanced problems. I contacted Dr. Griffiths and asked him if it would be possible for me to obtain a solutions manual to both his E&M and his Quantum texts, but he informed me that I could not obtain these manuals unless I was an instructor at the insistence of the publisher (Prentice Hall). This is unfortunate.

All in all, the text is a fantastic book for the undergraduate, and a helpful resource for the graduate student. The book is a valuable resource for the intermediate or slightly advanced undergraduate physics student, and I encourage instructors at the undergraduate level to use the Griffiths text.

This book is wonderful. I used it for a 1 year junior-level course at UERJ and I can say it was perfect.

I really don't understand the people that wrote bad reviews about this book. First of all, they seem not to understand that this book is AN INTRODUCTION. There exist excellents books on advanced material (Jackson, Schwinger...), but I doubt anyone has begun with those.

Some of those reviewers say that the math in the book is too elementary. So what? This is a EM course, not a Mathematical Physics one. If you want to struggle with Bessel or others horribles special functions, get Griffiths problems and change them by yourself so that the eigenfunctions are those you want. If you want Green's function, go ahead, you can solve lots of Griffiths' problems with it. But this is not the point. This is a physics book, and the discussion on the fenomena are very good. In my opinion the math used is that you do need to understand the physics.

Other constant complaint is the lack of problem solutions saying that without them you cannot know if you're learning. Well, particularly, it didn't bother me. The problems are very well selected and cover a wide range of difficulty. The easy ones should tell you if you're doing well. And, despite of what others have said, the problems make this a very good book for self-studying.

Finally, I don't understand the complaints about Griffiths' colloquial style. Some other (well celebrated) authors share the same informal writing style and everybody call them genious. Actually, this makes the book very pleasant to read thorough leaving the hard work to the problems.

This book sucks. Griffths, if you can spend your most time typying FREE solution manual for instructors, and let them cut and copy it and scan them on to their class website, why don't you offer students a solution manual. Why do we have to spend 100 bucks for this thing. I really don't understand the people that wrote GOOD reviews about this book. no answers in the back. skip steps in examples, the author is trying to punk you.