Electromagnetism
What it's about:
James Clerk Maxwell is a lesser known scientist than Einstein or Newton probably because his life work is so complicated to understand. Yet if it wasn’t for him, wireless technology wouldn't exist.
Maxwell built on Faraday’s work to unify magnetism, electricity, and light under the same concept: electromagnetic waves.
The law:
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X=a•t2The distance covered by a falling object is equal to the product of the acceleration constant and the square of the time (independant of mass).
James Clerk Maxwell
James Clerk Maxwell was born on June 13th 1831 and joined the University of Edinburgh at 16. He did not find his classes very demanding which gave him time to experiment with electricity, chemistry, magnetic apparatus, but also with polarized light which was his chief concern. At 18 already he had written about the equilibrium of elastic solids.
He also graduated from Cambridge university but it is while working at King’s college in London that he met Michael Faraday, 40 years his seniors, who inspired his to work on electromagnetic waves.
He also contributed greatly to color photography and thermodynamics. Maxwell died in 1879.
Where?
Discovery Description:
Maxwell reunited four important equations which formulated relationships between electricity and magnetism. These equations described how electromagnetic waves could be created and would travel around us at the speed of light. This made him realize that light... was also an electromagnetic wave !
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