The Long Road to Maxwell’s Equations
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The Long Road to Maxwell’s Equations
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Re: The Long Road to Maxwell’s Equations
#2When I read these stories, it always amazes me how the ordinary terms we use everyday are simply the names of the people who discovered them. That and how difficult it was to make discoveries back then when even the math wasn't fully formed. Today we just ask Google for anything we don't know.
Re: The Long Road to Maxwell’s Equations
#3What a coincidence, earlier today we studied these equations in class, only we used different names:
Maxwell-Faraday equation.
Maxwell-Gauss equation.
Maxwell-flux equation.
Maxwell-Ampère equation.
Re: The Long Road to Maxwell’s Equations
#4When I read these stories, it always amazes me how the ordinary terms we use everyday are simply the names of the people who discovered them. That and how difficult it was to make discoveries back then when even the math wasn't fully formed. Today we just ask Google for anything we don't know.
when even the math wasn't fully formed
You'd be surprised by how much of today's used mathematics is actually "old". I mean most of it (even the mathematics of electromagnetism) hasn't changed since the 19th century and before, we are using the same theorems they used at the time.
Re: The Long Road to Maxwell’s Equations
#5When I read these stories, it always amazes me how the ordinary terms we use everyday are simply the names of the people who discovered them. That and how difficult it was to make discoveries back then when even the math wasn't fully formed. Today we just ask Google for anything we don't know.
Languages are so weird when deconstructed. My observation is that English in particular seems to have a big lead on eponyms.
Re: The Long Road to Maxwell’s Equations
#6What a coincidence, earlier today we studied these equations in class, only we used different names: Maxwell-Faraday equation. Maxwell-Gauss equation. Maxwell-flux equation. Maxwell-Ampère equation.
Interesting! Are you studying in the US? I went to high school and university in the States and never learned individual names for those equations.
But now you say this it's kind of odd -- we have Ohm's law (and pythagoras' theorem and the Riemann function etc). What's different about these four?
(and it seems the name "Maxwell's Flux Equation" would really be simply the description of that one rather than a name).
Re: The Long Road to Maxwell’s Equations
#7I really enjoyed this book on the discovery and definition of electromagnetism.
Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field: How Two Men Revolutionized Physics (http://www.amazon.com/Faraday-Maxwell-Electromagnetic-Field-...)
Re: The Long Road to Maxwell’s Equations
#8What a coincidence, earlier today we studied these equations in class, only we used different names: Maxwell-Faraday equation. Maxwell-Gauss equation. Maxwell-flux equation. Maxwell-Ampère equation.
Interesting! Are you studying in the US? I went to high school and university in the States and never learned individual names for those equations. But now you say this it's kind of odd -- we have Ohm's law (and pythagoras' theorem and the Riemann function etc). What's different about these four? (and it seems the name "Maxwell's Flux Equation" would really be simply the description of that one rather than a name).
Are you studying in the US?
No, Tunisia, 2nd year of CPGE (Maths/Physics), French curriculum.
What's different about these four?
It's just the names, what matters is the equations themselves I believe, the names only reflect their history (except for that third one indeed, it seems like a description but that's the actual name used[0] )
0.http://fr.wikiversity.org/wiki/%C3%89lectromagn%C3%A9tisme_d...
Re: The Long Road to Maxwell’s Equations
#9To this day, I still think derivation of the speed of light in a vacuum from the Maxwell equations is one of the most elegant and beautiful things in Physics.
Re: The Long Road to Maxwell’s Equations
#10When I read these stories, it always amazes me how the ordinary terms we use everyday are simply the names of the people who discovered them. That and how difficult it was to make discoveries back then when even the math wasn't fully formed. Today we just ask Google for anything we don't know.
when even the math wasn't fully formed You'd be surprised by how much of today's used mathematics is actually "old". I mean most of it (even the mathematics of electromagnetism) hasn't changed since the 19th century and before, we are using the same theorems they used at the time.
It depends on what you mean by fully formed. For example the idea of vectors and quaternions, which seem so natural, is quite new (~250 years old) [1]
When maxwell derived and unified electromagnetic theory, he didn't use constructs like the gradient and divergence of vector fields (those concepts didn't exist), instead performing those operations 'just' partial derivatives [2]. Sure, the math is explicitly identical, but the modern concepts of operators on vector fields that is so powerful just didn't exist which, to me, is rather telling about the evolution mathematical thinking: we are all doing the same thing (and have been for a long time) but way we think about it evolves with our notation. And notation that we are used to is actually quite new
[1] https://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~temple/MAT21D/SUPPLEMENTARY-AR...
[2] http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/155/459.full....