#155 overall
8.02 Electricity and Magnetism (Walter Lewin)
MIT OpenCourseWare
3 recommenders · 3 threads · recommended in 3 years, 2012–2025 · score 2.8
MIT OpenCourseWare's recorded introductory electricity and magnetism course taught by Walter Lewin, covering the physics of electric and magnetic fields at a calculus-based undergraduate level. It is the 2002 Spring offering of MIT's 8.02.
Commenters point to Walter Lewin's clear, intuitive video lectures as a strong resource for learning electromagnetism, and one suggests following along with it and doing the exercises.
Recommendations by year
20062026
As a current physics PhD student, I'd like to mention that this is exactly how I've gone through my educational career. In physics, such simple terms go a long long way, and to this day I still fall back on very simple ideas to understand sophisticated systems (e.g., "Well, there is positive charge here, so negative charge would want to get close to it", etc.). Many papers and many people make things seem far more complicated than they are. Personally, I am a huge fan of using colloquial language in describing things, as I think it makes things far easier to parse and get something out of it that you feel comfortable with.
I've seen a lot of success in my teaching, too, largely because of my effort to keep things colloquial and down-to-earth. Too many teachers fall into the trap of not falling back on things students are comfortable with when students are not understanding the material (or, hell, maybe the teachers aren't particularly comfortable with the subject matter). A huge part of my success as a teacher is exactly that I try to see where the students' train of logic gets derailed and take a step back in how abstract the explanation is there while also providing ample motivation for that sort of thinking.
Lastly, I wanted to recommend a great resource for learning specifically physics from a guy that is fantastic at explaining things in simple terms: Walter Lewin. Walter Lewin is a professor at MIT, and has incredible video-recorded lectures on electricity and magnetism (the class is 8.02). if you have an ounce of interest, go watch some --- you won't regret it.
Electrodynamics is taught to literally millions of people in Physics or engineering degrees across the world. It is the furtherest from fringe as it could be.
I would recommend following along the MIT OCW course or similar, doing the exercises. Use AI to help you follow the course and ask questions about things not clear to you.
It's definitely possible but it might be a bit tough. I'd say Electromagnetism will probably be much more important than linear algebra. You can check out 8.02 on OCW (http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-02-electricity-and-magn...) which covers basically the same material as AP Physics but with more calculus and a higher level of difficulty of course. Good luck!