Abstract
At a simple level one can think of our world as a complex swirl of four elementary constituents: the electron, proton, neutron, and photon. You are familiar with the first three as the building blocks of atoms: neutrons and protons make up the nucleus (the subject of the next chapter), and electrons orbit the nucleus to make an atom. Finally, the photon is another way to think of light. But a simple list of ingredients is not enough to give understanding. This chapter will sketch the modern interpretation of light. We will see how the theories of James Clerk Maxwell resolved 2500 years of controversy and set the stage for the quantum revolution. Along the way we will explore the important concepts of force and field.
“I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force, and in magnetizing a ray of light.”
— Michael Faraday
“One cannot escape the feeling that these mathematical formulae have an independent existence and an intelligence of their own, that they are wiser than we are, wiser even than their discoverers, that we get more out of them than was originally put into them.”
— Heinrich Rudolf Hertz
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Notes
- 1.
This stone was found near Miletus at a place called Magnesia; hence the name.
- 2.
Gilbert was personal physician to Queen Elizabeth I. He died from the plague shortly after his treatise was published.
- 3.
“For many things lead me to have a suspicion that all phenomena may depend on certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by causes not yet known, either are impelled toward one another and cohere in regular figures, or are repelled from one another and recede.” – Newton
- 4.
21 April 1820, at the University of Copenhagen.
- 5.
More fully, the “Royal Society of London for improving Natural Knowledge”, founded in 1660 by royal charter.
- 6.
A dynamo is an inverse motor, producing electricity from rotational motion.
- 7.
Faraday was acutely aware of this issue, “There is one question in relation to gravity, which, if we could ascertain or touch it, would greatly enlighten us. It is, whether gravitation requires time. If it did, it would show undeniably that a physical agency existed in the course of the line of force.” Experimental Researches in Electricity, 1852.
- 8.
The zero on the right hand side of this equation is significant. It implies that a magnetic analogue of electric charge, called a magnetic monopole, does not exist.
- 9.
Alhazen is the latinized version of Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham
- 10.
Source: A.M. Smith, Review of A. I. Sabra, The Optics of Ibn al-Haytham. Books I, II, III: On Direct Vision, The British Journal for the History of Science 25, 358 (1992).
- 11.
Source: H. Salih, M. Al-Amri and M. El Gomati, The Miracle of Light, A World of Science, 3, 2 (2005).
- 12.
He failed dramatically, but the idea of working logically and with the aid of observation helped launch the Scientific Revolution.
- 13.
Thus light is a transverse wave, a topic we will take up again in the next section.
- 14.
Now named in honor of the committee head as the Arago spot.
- 15.
In fact Faraday had guessed that light was electromagnetic in character decades before.
- 16.
Look back at the quotation from Hertz that opened this chapter, as you will understand it better now.
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Swanson, E.S. (2016). Electricity, Magnetism, and Light. In: Science and Society. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21987-5_5
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