Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A theory of electromagnetism, known as classical electromagnetism, was developed by several physicists during the period between 1820 and 1873, when James Clerk Maxwell's treatise was published, which unified previous developments into a single theory, proposing that light was an electromagnetic wave propagating in the luminiferous ether. [26]
The electromagnetic theory of light adds to the old undulatory theory an enormous province of transcendent interest and importance; it demands of us not merely an explanation of all the phenomena of light and radiant heat by transverse vibrations of an elastic solid called ether, but also the inclusion of electric currents, of the permanent ...
The electromagnetic spectrum. Together, Maxwell's equations provide a single uniform theory of the electric and magnetic fields and Maxwell's work in creating this theory has been called "the second great unification in physics" after the first great unification of Newton's law of universal gravitation. [17]
The theory provides a description of electromagnetic phenomena whenever the relevant length scales and field strengths are large enough that quantum mechanical effects are negligible. For small distances and low field strengths, such interactions are better described by quantum electrodynamics which is a quantum field theory .
James Clerk Maxwell, "A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 155, 459–512 (1865). (This article accompanied a December 8, 1864 presentation by Maxwell to the Royal Society.) A Dynamical Theory Of The Electromagnetic Field – 1865.
Continuous charge distribution. The volume charge density ρ is the amount of charge per unit volume (cube), surface charge density σ is amount per unit surface area (circle) with outward unit normal nĚ‚, d is the dipole moment between two point charges, the volume density of these is the polarization density P.
1864 – James Clerk Maxwell publishes his papers on a dynamical theory of the electromagnetic field; 1865 – James Clerk Maxwell publishes his landmark paper A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field, in which Maxwell's equations demonstrated that electric and magnetic forces are two complementary aspects of electromagnetism.
The final form of Maxwell's equations was published in 1865 A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field, [8] in which the theory is formulated in strictly mathematical form. In 1873, Maxwell published A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism as a summary of his work on electromagnetism.