Reddit reviews Fundamentals of Applied Electromagnetics (6th Edition)

2015 EE grad here. Unless there's a stellar instructor, I would not enroll in Physics 202 if you've already met the requirement through AP. Granted I had a pretty horrible experience my freshman year with downright poor instructors, so I have some bias.

You'll do a review of circuit analysis in ECE 230 where the the analysis techniques are taught again in a much more methodical way from the outset. The physics department does not do the introductory courses justice in my opinion. You very well may have had a more thorough experience in your AP course. My only advice is to practice electrostatics, as the instructors for ECE 220 are hit and miss. The text for the electrodynamics sequence is probably still Ulaby (old version here). I'd recommend reviewing statics from there. It's a good reference and still on my desk at work.

Physics 202 or equivalent credit is also a prerequisite for ECE 235 - Solid State Electronics - so check out that course description as well. I applied more from Math 222 and ECE 320 to the wave theory of that course though. I don't think 202 really touched on it much.

So, be happy you don't have to sit through those two lectures, two discussions, and a three hour lab every week should you choose not to! Oh dear, and WebAssign. You won't ever have to use WebAssign! Consider also that 5 credits are worth quite a lot, and getting a jump on the core ECE curriculum may set you up to graduate early. There are so many better ways to use 5 credits in ECE/CS advanced electives down the road.

Congrats on the 5!

I used Ulaby's Fundamentals of Applied Electromagnetics in my course. This book is light and fairly comprehensible (for an engineering textbook). However, if you don't refer to the textbook much, you're probably just as better off wikipedia'ing concepts you don't understand (in addition to any other supplemental materials you'll need to use).

The problem here, from what I can tell, is that you've relied too much on plug-and-chug for EMF1/Physics 2, and I'm willing to bet you did the same thing for Calculus 3 and differential equations. You probably know how to carry out a procedure, but not what procedure means. Since EMF is more abstract, understanding the meaning of the operations you use will help a lot more.

First, brush up on your math. It's not enough to know how to find the gradient, divergence, and curl of something. You'll need to understand abstractly what these operations represent. If you can't understand it, then you're missing something more fundamental, like "what is a derivative" (not just how to do it, but what does it mean when I take a derivative of something).

Second, brush up on your physics. Concepts can be described by some very general formulas, and those formulas can be transformed into a related concept (like Maxwell's equations). You'll have to use the math that you've reviewed to get a better "illustration" and understand why those operations are used to get the desired result.

So after reviewing all of that, apply them to your lecture notes. You do not truly understand the concepts unless you can do the math associated with them. The underlying theories are connected. You're starting at point A (information and associated formulas you should have already learned), and you need to get to point B (the theory). Figure out what assumptions they're making, why they're making those assumptions, and derive the formulas from point A to point B. This is how you answer "Explain how X might affect Y" questions.

Sometimes, you have all the little nuggets of information, but you don't know how to apply them. I suggest finding some worked-out problems from the internet or other textbooks from the library. The problems will probably not be the same, but it'll be similar. Break down the problem into conceptual parts, starting with information you know and are given, because different components will be scattered across many different problems.

I know that this advice may sound repeated and unhelpful, but there's no shortcut for classes that emphasize understanding. There's a reason why your old study methods don't work: plug-and-chug is basically rote memorization, and it's easier to teach and test for. The good news is that you've learned the fundamental concepts before; it's just filed away deep within your brain. The bad news is that you have to figure out what it is that you know, fill in the gaps for things you don't know, and then apply them in new ways. Once you get over the initial bump of difficulty, hopefully you'll start seeing the patterns, and the rest of EMF will be much easier from there!

skin depth is the distance a wave penetrates a conductor when it is incident on it's surface. The wave itself doesn't have inherent skin depth. it has to do with when a electromagnetic wave comes in contact with another medium.

source: http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Applied-Electromagnetics-Fawwaz-Ulaby/dp/0132139316

Page 334 in chapter 7 i believe is where it defines skin depth. Incase you want to find a PDF and look it up yourself. This book also gives in depth descriptions of transmission lines, and fiber optics.