is
PHYSICS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE
classic novel The Invisible Man, in which a medical student accidentally discovers the power of the fourth dimension and becomes invisible. Unfortunately, he uses this fantastic power for private gain, starts
a wave of petty crimes, and eventually dies desperately trying to evade
the police.
MAXWELL'S EQUATIONS AND THE SECRET OF LIGHT
It was not until the work of Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell,
one of the giants of nineteenth-century physics, that physicists had a
firm understanding of the laws of optics. Maxwell, in some sense, was
the opposite of Michael Faraday. Whereas Faraday had superb experimental instincts but no formal training whatsoever, Maxwell, a contemporary of Faraday, was a master of advanced mathematics. He
excelled as a student of mathematical physics at Cambridge, where
Isaac Newton had done his work two centuries earlier.
Newton had invented the calculus, which was expressed in the language of "differential equations," which describe how objects smoothly
undergo infinitesimal changes in space and time. The motion of ocean
waves, fluids, gases, and cannon balls could all be expressed in the language of differential equations. Maxwell set out with a clear goal, to express the revolutionary findings of Faraday and his force fields through
precise differential equations.
Maxwell began with Faraday's discovery that electric fields could
turn into magnetic fields and vice versa. He took Faraday's depictions
of force fields and rewrote them in the precise language of differential
equations, producing one of the most important series of equations in
modern science. They are a series of eight fierce-looking differential
equations. Every physicist and engineer in the world has to sweat over
them when mastering electromagnetism in graduate school.
Next, Maxwell asked himself the fateful question: if magnetic fields
can turn into electric fields and vice versa, what happens if they are
constantly turning into each other in a never-ending pattern? Maxwell
PHYSICS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE
classic novel The Invisible Man, in which a medical student accidentally discovers the power of the fourth dimension and becomes invisible. Unfortunately, he uses this fantastic power for private gain, starts
a wave of petty crimes, and eventually dies desperately trying to evade
the police.
MAXWELL'S EQUATIONS AND THE SECRET OF LIGHT
It was not until the work of Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell,
one of the giants of nineteenth-century physics, that physicists had a
firm understanding of the laws of optics. Maxwell, in some sense, was
the opposite of Michael Faraday. Whereas Faraday had superb experimental instincts but no formal training whatsoever, Maxwell, a contemporary of Faraday, was a master of advanced mathematics. He
excelled as a student of mathematical physics at Cambridge, where
Isaac Newton had done his work two centuries earlier.
Newton had invented the calculus, which was expressed in the language of "differential equations," which describe how objects smoothly
undergo infinitesimal changes in space and time. The motion of ocean
waves, fluids, gases, and cannon balls could all be expressed in the language of differential equations. Maxwell set out with a clear goal, to express the revolutionary findings of Faraday and his force fields through
precise differential equations.
Maxwell began with Faraday's discovery that electric fields could
turn into magnetic fields and vice versa. He took Faraday's depictions
of force fields and rewrote them in the precise language of differential
equations, producing one of the most important series of equations in
modern science. They are a series of eight fierce-looking differential
equations. Every physicist and engineer in the world has to sweat over
them when mastering electromagnetism in graduate school.
Next, Maxwell asked himself the fateful question: if magnetic fields
can turn into electric fields and vice versa, what happens if they are
constantly turning into each other in a never-ending pattern? Maxwell