This is a plug for a paper I am posting at the Lincoln AAPT meeting next month,
and which is given in full at my web site below.
At high frequencies, current in a wire decreases rapidly from the wire's radius in
toward the axis. Intermediate electromagnetics texts which deal with this problem
go into the 'Kelvin functions' . It takes serious time and effort to get this across to
students.
Instead of that approach, you can numerically integrate the basic equation(s) for
the electric field (or current density) from the wire axis out to the radius, and plot
the result. That's all it takes to examine the behavior. (I give both a Runge-Kutta
recipe and a Maple worksheet. )
Mike
===============================================================
Mike Moloney http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~moloney
moloney@nextwork.rose-hulman.edu
Dept of Physics & Applied Optics (812) 877 8302
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology Terre Haute, IN 47803