About

About this site

This site is a free self-study resource for a first course on Electromagnetic Fields and Waves, written by Prof. Gökhan Çınar for students everywhere.

The approach is to assume a small set of fundamental laws and to derive everything else from them. Each section therefore develops the theory first and then applies it, in this order: model problems, home exercises, further exercises and worked examples with real numbers. Solutions are hidden until you ask for them. Try first, then reveal the solution one step at a time.

How to use the simulations

• Drag anything that looks draggable: charges, probe points, Gaussian surfaces, the dielectric slab.
• Every number is computed from the formula shown under the tool, so you can check your own calculation against it.
• The simulations run entirely in your browser. Nothing is sent to a server. They work on phones and tablets as well.

Notation

Vectors carry arrows ($E$), unit vectors are written $a_x$, $a_{\rho }$, $a_r$. Primed coordinates belong to the source and $R=r-r{}^{\prime }$ points from the source to the field point. SI units throughout. In all numerical work ${\epsilon }_0=\frac{1}{36\pi }\times 10^{-9}F/m\approx 8.842\times 10^{-12}F/m$ (the measured value is $8.854\times 10^{-12}F/m$), so that $1/(4\pi {\epsilon }_0)=9\times 10^{9}m/F$, and ${\mu }_0=4\pi \times 10^{-7}H/m$, so that $c=1/\sqrt{{\mu }_0{\epsilon }_0}=3\times 10^{8}m/s$ exactly.

Copyright

© 2026 Gökhan Çınar. All rights reserved.

The text, figures, worked solutions, exercises and interactive simulations on this site are the work of the author and are protected by copyright. You are welcome to read and use them for your own personal, non-commercial study, and teachers may link to any page of the site.

Copying, reproducing, redistributing, translating or publishing any part of the site, in print or electronically, including posting copies of pages, figures or solutions on other websites, requires the prior written permission of the author. Short quotations for teaching, study or review are permitted when the source is acknowledged as: Gökhan Çınar, Electromagnetic Fields and Waves.

Some problems, examples and exercises are taken or adapted from other textbooks, in particular D. K. Cheng, Field and Wave Electromagnetics, 2nd ed. (Addison-Wesley, 1989) and B. M. Notaroš, Electromagnetics (Pearson, 2010). Each of them is marked with its source ("Source:" or "Adapted from:" under the statement), and the rights to that material remain with its authors and publishers.

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