The first of these is Faraday’s law as derived in Chapter 10. The second is Ampere’s law. We first introduced this law in
Chapter 8 for the magnetic fields of steady currents. The law as given here is sometimes called the modified Ampere’s law
to distinguish it from the pre-Maxwell form defined in Chapter 8. The third relation is Gauss’s law, which was discussed in
Chapter 4. The fourth indicates the divergence-free condition of the magnetic flux density which was discussed at length
in Chapter 8 as indicating the fact that the magnetic field is always generated by a pair of poles (i.e., no single magnetic
poles exist).
In practical applications, we may be required to solve for any or all of the variables in Maxwell’s equations. It is well
worth pausing here to discuss these equations. In particular, we ask ourselves if, indeed, these equations are all that we need
to solve an electromagnetic problem.
First, we note that the equations [either in differential form in Eqs. (11.5) through (11.8) or in integral form in
Eqs. (11.16) through (11.19)], contain four vector variables E, D, B, and H and two sources: J (or I) and ρv (or Q). The
first is a vector source, whereas the second a scalar source. Each vector variable has three components in space, and,
therefore, we actually have 12 unknown values for the 12 components of the fields. Since the first two equations are vector
equations, they are equivalent to six scalar equations. The last two equations [Eqs. (11.18) and (11.19)] are scalar equations.
Thus, we have 8 scalar equations in 12 unknowns. Clearly, some additional relations must be added in order to solve the
equations. Before we add any relations, we must also ascertain if the four Maxwell’s equations are independent. If they are
not, additional relations might be required.
Recall the way that Maxwell’s equations were derived. They were based on the definition of the curl and divergence.
At no point did we require that the equations be independent. In fact, the last two equations in each set can be derived from
the first two with the aid of the continuity equation. To see that this is the case, consider Eq. (11.6). If we take the divergence
on both sides of the equation, we get