Electromagnetic Induction

What it's about:

Michal Faraday’s first recorded experiment was creating a voltaic battery using seven ha’penny coins in 1812. From there, he set on to understand the fundamental nature of electricity.

His most significant work: discovering that a magnetic field will only create an electric current in a coil when the field varies: This is called Electromagnetic Induction.This underlines the polarized nature of electrons: a moving magnet will set electrons in motion, and thus creating an electrical flow.

Michael Faraday

Starting as a delivery boy for a local bookstore at 13, Michael Faraday spend his earnings on chemicals and apparatus to confirm some of the science he was reading about. After attending scientist Humphrey Davy’s lectures and sending his a 300 pages handwritten manuscript of notes he had taken, Davy offered young Faraday a job as chemical assistant at the Royal Institution of Great Britain.

The job lasted 54 years and permitted Faraday do revolutionize the understanding of electromagnetism.

Where?

Discovery Description:

It was well know that an electric current creates a magnetic field, and scientists had the intuition that the opposite should be true. Michael Faraday set two electric circuits next to each other: one with running current (and thus creating a magnetic field) and another one without current flowing. His hope was that the magnetic field generated by the one current would create an electric current in the other circuit.

That did not work, but when he shut off the current he noticed a slight change in tension of the other one due to the varying of the magnetic field. He had discovered induction.

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