I thought it was interesting that they felt the need to briefly explain "del".
The Long Road to Maxwell’s Equations
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Re: The Long Road to Maxwell’s Equations
#12To 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.
Not only that, but if you change the permittivity and permeability to that of any material, you get the speed of light in that material. And for all this to happen, you get the fact that light is an electromagnetic wave from Maxwell's equations.
Re: The Long Road to Maxwell’s Equations
#13To 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.
Agreed. I went to college in the US and got a EE degree and along the way almost switched to Applied Physics because of a really awesome professor I had and during which the physics I was taking was making use of the EE courses I went through. I was introduced to Elctro-mag theory from a physics class that was again used in some of my EE classes. I still remember physics experiments of passing current through two conductors each placed on balanced aparatus and watching the repel and attract due to current direction.
I had (still have) a knack for math and science but I'm just so amazed by guys like Maxwell.
The one thing that strikes me over and over is how insightful guys like Maxwell were. At such a young age and time he was piecing together I guess what others living at the same time might call phenomenon. Same for Einstein and Tesla. I mean he literally devised the mathematical model that foretold what we would discover in the future. And some 20 years later, Hans Christian Ørsted obtained the first evidence of a link between electricity and magnetism is quite amazing to me.
I recall reading an article some time ago about Tesla and how it was described that Tesla literally envisioned and saw AC current and then struggled to write it all down. I write software and I can see a similar pattern in myself. I often know and see, in my head, how something should work is so hard to explain. Of course at a much more basic level than these guys. It's as if Maxwell just saw and imagine how things were connected.
I keep waiting for the link that adds gravity to the mix.
Very nice article.