Story 2VGP A brief history of Maxwell's equations

A brief history of Maxwell's equations

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in science on (#2VGP)
story imageIEEE Spectrum has an interesting and detailed article about the long road to Maxwell's equations. It's not a text full of lengthy demonstrations and mathematical jargon (don't worry there are still some formulas), if anything it's a story of physics and mathematics spread across the nineteenth century.

It explains how, from observations made by Faraday and others, Maxwell deduced a set of 20 complex equations describing the electrical and magnetic fields. These equations almost fell into oblivion because of both their complexity and the lack of experimental evidences for the brand new concepts introduced (e.g. electromagnetic waves can propagate without a medium, light is just one of them, etc.). They were only saved thanks to a few passionate scientists, the Maxwellians, notably Heaviside who managed to simplify and sum them up into the well-known 4 equations that we all read once in some introductory engineering or physics textbook.
Reply 6 comments

A great accomplishment (Score: 1)

by skarjak@pipedot.org on 2014-12-03 22:08 (#2VGW)

It's amazing that we were able to reduce all these interactions to just these 4 equations. It's a shame everyone knows Einstein but only physicists know Maxwell.

EDIT: I love that the engineers got offended. :D

Re: A great accomplishment (Score: 2, Funny)

by seriously@pipedot.org on 2014-12-02 15:26 (#2VGX)

only physicists know Maxwell
Hey! I'm an engineer! [insert jokes about insensitive clods and Howard Wolowitz here]

Re: A great accomplishment (Score: 2, Funny)

by hartree@pipedot.org on 2014-12-03 01:51 (#2VHH)

" It's a shame everyone knows Einstein but only physicists know Maxwell."

You just have too little faith in the American public. Everyone knows that Einstein does bagels, and us old farts know that Maxwell is Agent 86!

Re: A great accomplishment (Score: 4, Interesting)

by fadrian@pipedot.org on 2014-12-03 02:48 (#2VHK)

Uh, I'm an electrical engineer, but I know that in general relativistic form, they collapse into one tensor equation. Do I get bonus points for reading Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler? Or am I derided for not knowing what string theory says about them?

Re: A great accomplishment (Score: 1)

by hyper@pipedot.org on 2014-12-03 09:10 (#2VHS)

Lots of people know about Maxwell and his silver hammer...

Re: A great accomplishment (Score: 1)

by rockdoctor@pipedot.org on 2014-12-08 13:35 (#2VQF)

Some geologists, non-geophysicists at that, know Maxwell, too