He realized that electric and magnetic fields are two sides of the same coin: Electricity and magnetism weren't two separate, distinct forces, but merely two expressions of the same, unified electromagnetic force. The same went for the magnetic field, and Maxwell took it one step further.
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Any other charges could sense this field, and based on the strength and direction of the field, it would know how to respond to the force of the original charge. Maxwell said an electric charge would produce an electric field that surrounded it. While Maxwell wasn't the first to envision such a field, he was the first to put it to work and turn it from a convenient mathematical trick into a real physical entity.įor example, Maxwell envisioned the forces of electricity and magnetism to be carried and communicated by electric and magnetic fields. Today, modern physics is based on the concept of the field, an entity that spans all of space and time and tells other objects how to move. To do it, he just had to think like a future scientist.
In just a few years, Maxwell envisioned the physics and mathematics needed to explain all of the experiments relating to electricity and magnetism. (Indeed, he invented the color photograph.) He had heard about all this electricity and magnetism confusion while he was working on another problem: how color vision works. Waving a magnet around could generate electricity.Īll of this was absolutely fascinating, but nobody had any idea what was going on. Starting the flow of electricity in one wire could spur the flow of electricity in another, even if the wires weren't connected. Electrified wires could deflect the motion of a compass. Most bewilderingly, there seemed to be a strange link between electricity and magnetism. Meanwhile, French scientists found that electricity moving down a wire could attract - or repel, depending on the direction of the flow - another wire and that electrified spheres could attract or repel with a strength proportional to the square of their separation. Luigi Galvani found that zapping living organisms with electricity caused them to move. Scientists like Benjamin Franklin had discovered that the electricity from lightning could be stored. And they had mastered the use of the compass, albeit without understanding how it worked.īy the time Maxwell stepped in, a wide variety of experiments had expanded on the weirdness of these forces.
They had found seemingly magical rocks, called lodestones, that could attract bits of metal. They knew that lightning could start fires. While the two forces had been known to humanity for millennia, the more scientists studied these forces, the weirder they seemed.Īncient people knew that certain animals, like electric eels, could shock you if you touched them and that certain substances, like amber, could attract things if you rubbed them. At the time, one of the great focuses of scientific interest was the strange and perplexing properties of electricity and magnetism.