EE380 – Electromagnetic Theory

Lecture 1
Introduction to Vector Analysis in Cartesian Coordinate
System

Dr. Adeem Aslam

Assistant Professor
Department of Electrical Engineering
University of Engineering and Technology Lahore

September 14, 2021

Lecture 1 1
Overview of the Course
Time-varying
Vector Analysis in
Electromagnetic
Different
Electrostatics Magnetostatics Fields, wave
Coordinate
propagation and
Systems
antennas

Review of Gauss’s Law, Review of Biot-Savart and

Maxwell’s Equations,
Divergence Theorem, Ampere’s Circuital Laws,
Required to analyze plane wave
Electric Potential, Magnetic Potentials,
vector electric and propagation and
Boundary conditions for Magnetization, Boundary
magnetic fields radiating elements,
conductors and dielectrics, conditions for magnetic
i.e., antennas
Polarization, Laplace’s and materials, vector
Poisson’s equations Poisson’s equation

Grading Policy Books

Quizzes 15% Text:
1. Engineering Electromagnetics, William H. Hayt, Jr. and John A. Buck, 8th Ed., McGraw Hill Inc., 2012
Complex Engineering Problem (CEP) 15% 2. Field and Wave Electromagnetics, D. Cheng, 2nd edition, Pearson Education Inc., 1998
Midterm Exam 30% Reference:
1. Elements of Electromagnetics, Matthew N. O. Sadiku, Oxford University Press, 2006
Final Exam 40% 2. Electricity and Magnetism, Edward M. Purcell and David J. Morin, Cambridge University Press, 2013

Lecture 1 2
Scalars, Vectors and Fields
Scalars
• Scalars represent quantities whose value may be represented by a single real number.
• Examples of scalars include:
o dimensions such as length, area and volume,
o other physical quantities such as mass, density, temperature, voltage etc.

Vectors
• Vectors (in Euclidean space) represent quantities which are specified by both magnitude and
direction in space.
• Vectors in an dimensional Euclidean space have components.
• Examples of vectors include displacement (distance between two points in Euclidean space along a
particular direction), force, velocity, acceleration etc.

Fields
• A field is a physical quantity that has value at each point in space and time, i.e., it is a function that
permeates space (with in a region) at all times.
• A field can be scalar, such as temperature throughout the core of the Earth, or it can be vector, such
as the gravitational/magnetic field of Earth.
Lecture 1 3
Vector Analysis
• In order to analyze scalar and vector fields, rules for the scalar and vector algebra must be defined
first.
• Rules for scalar algebra are already well-known.
• Some of the rules for vector algebra are similar to that of scalar algebra while others differ
significantly.
Addition of Vectors
• The most common operation on vectors is that of
addition, which follows parallelogram law as
shown in Figure 1.
• It can be observed that the vector addition is
commutative, i.e.,

Figure 1: Parallelogram law for addition of two vectors A

• Vector addition is also associative, i.e.,

and . The vectors can also be added by placing the tail of
B (or ) at the head of (or ) and by connecting the tail
of (or ) with the head of (or ).

Note: A vector is represented by a bold letter and is drawn as an arrow of finite length, with the location given by its tail.
Lecture 1 4
Vector Analysis
Subtraction of Vectors
• Subtraction of a vector from is equivalent to adding the
additive inverse of , i.e., , to .
• Additive inverse of a vector is obtained by reversing the
direction of the vector.
• Figure 2 shows the subtraction of two vectors, which is
indeed addition of a vector with the additive inverse of the
Figure 2: Parallelogram law for subtraction of two vectors.
other vector.
Multiplication of Vectors by Scalars
• Multiplication of a vector by a scalar changes the magnitude (length) of the vector.
• However, if the scalar is negative, the direction of the resulting vector is always
reversed.
• Multiplication by a scalar also obeys the associative and distributive laws, i.e.,

• Division of a vector by a scalar is multiplication of the vector by multiplicative

inverse of the scalar. Figure 3: Multiplication of a vector with a positive
scalar changes the magnitude of the vector.

Note: Two vectors are said to be equal if their difference is zero.

Lecture 1 5
Projection of Vectors
• Using the trigonometric identities, a
Trigonometric Functions vector can be projected onto another
vector as , where is the length
of vector & is the angle between the
vectors.

Figure 5: Projection (shown in blue dotted line) of a

vector onto another vector, separated by angle .

The Dot/Scalar/Inner Product

The dot or inner product between two vectors and is
defined as the product of projected component of onto
Figure 4: A right-angled triangle, showing three the vector with the length of , i.e.,
sides and the angle.

• The dot product is commutative and results in a scalar, which is why it is

From the above figure, base of the triangle can be seen to be the projection of also called the scalar product.
the hypotenuse , i.e., . • Positive dot product of two vectors indicates similar “sense” of direction
where as negative dot product indicates opposite “sense” of direction.
Zero dot product indicates that the vectors are mutually orthogonal.
Lecture 1 6
Rectangular/Cartesian Coordinate System
• Figure 6 on the right shows the simplest of coordinate
systems, called the rectangular or cartesian coordinate
system.
•
Origin
In this system, the three coordinate axes are setup
mutually perpendicular to each other.
• The axes are labeled in the right-handed convention, in
which the curved fingers of the right hand indicate the
rotation of -axis into -axis and the thumb shows the
direction of the -axis.
• The point at which the axes meet is called the origin of the
coordinate system.
• Any point in the cartesian coordinate system is represented
by the -, - and -coordinates. Coordinate of a point is the
distance between the origin and the intersection of the Figure 6: A right-handed rectangular/cartesian coordinate
system. The curved right-hand fingers indicate the
perpendicular dropped from the point to the respective direction of turning -axis towards -axis and the direction
axis. of the thumb shows the -axis.

• A constant coordinate plane is a surface that is

perpendicular to the coordinate axis at a particular value of
the coordinate.
Lecture 1 7
Rectangular/Cartesian Coordinate System
Alternative Interpretation of Coordinates

Figure 7: Coordinates of the point are found by

drawing perpendicular lines onto the respective axes. - and -
coordinates of are found by dropping a perpendicular onto Figure 8: A point is also identified as the intersection of the planes
the plane first. Point can be thought of as the image and . . So, coordinates of a point represent planes intersecting at that point.
of in the plane.

Lecture 1 8
Rectangular/Cartesian Coordinate System
Differential Surface Area and Differential Volume Elements
• A point can be displaced in coordinates
by small differential amounts to obtain a
new point .
• The small incremental displacements in two
coordinates, keeping the third fixed, results in six
faces of a rectangular parallelopiped.
• The differential surface area of the six planes of
the parallelopiped is given by:
• at fixed ,
• at fixed ,
• at fixed .
• The differential volume of the parallelopiped is
given by , and the distance between the
points and , which forms the diagonal of the
Figure 9: Coordinates of a point can be increased by differential amounts
of and to obtain a new point . The six parallelopiped, is given by
surfaces, obtained by incrementing two coordinates while fixing the third, form a
rectangular parallelopiped, with surface differential area of and
differential volume of .
Lecture 1 9
Vector Representation in Cartesian Coordinate System
• A vector in cartesian coordinate system is represented as
Vector addition,
subtraction and
multiplication (or
division) by a scalar are
carried out component-
wise.
where are the components of the vector along
the respective axes and are vectors having unit
magnitude along the respective coordinate axes, as shown
in Figure 10, and hence, are mutually orthogonal.
• Magnitude of a vector is a measure of its length and is
given by Figure 10: Three unit vectors along the three
mutually perpendicular axes.

A unit vector of a
• Hence, the unit vector associated with , is given by vector is
dividing the vector with its magnitude, i.e., representative of the
direction that the
vector points in.

Lecture 1 10
Vector Analysis Revisited
• Since the coordinate unit vectors are mutually orthogonal, we observe that

• This indicates that components of a vector A are projections of the vector onto respective coordinate unit
vectors, i.e.,

• The dots product obeys the distributive law, hence, from equations (2) and (5), it can be represented in terms
of the components of the vectors as

• Equation (7) shows that dot product of a vector with itself results in the magnitude square of the vector.
• Projection (scalar component) of a vector in the direction of , given by the unit vector , is given by

where is the angle between and .Vector component of in the direction of is then given by

Lecture 1 11
Scalar and Vector Fields

FIELD A quantity that Scalar and Vector Fields

permeates space
and time.
• Every point in the cartesian coordinate
system is represented by a position vector,
as shown in Figure 11.
• Since the position of a point is given by the
coordinates, the position vector is a
function of the coordinates .
• Hence, a vector field, being a function of
the points in a given region of space, is a
vector function of a position vector, whose
magnitude and direction changes as the
position vector is changed.
• On the other hand, a scalar field is a scalar
function of the position vector whose
magnitude changes as the position vector
Figure 11: Every point in the cartesian coordinate system is is changed.
represented by a position vector .

Lecture 1 12