I have always felt that tying these developmental ideas together historically is the best way to teach them. It gives human context, then the detail, however correct, is more readily understandable and can be appreciated more clearly. Great work Kathy.
Correct. Most teaching is done without much of the human interest stories and that results in very dry material. This contributes to many subjects being seen as boring.
"I suppose I can stay up that late" made me laugh out loud; I'm quite a night owl myself. Kathy, this series is just great! Very clear and informative, and fun too.
A few notes on Maxwell's time in Aberdeen from an Aberdonian! First, locals pronounce Marischal College as "Marshall College", i.e. it's just an older spelling of the same word. The name comes from the college being founded in the 1500s by an "Earl Marischal of Scotland" (think military governor, not a policeman!). Maxwell had the chair of Natural Philosphy there between 1856-1860. In 1860 Marischal College merged with Kings College to create the University of Aberdeen, which now had one physics professor too many. Kings had a well connected prof that nobody now remembers, while Marischal College had the gifted but very young Maxwell... so they got rid of Maxwell! It was while in Aberdeen that Maxwell proved that Saturn's rings must be formed from lots of little rocks, rather than a solid band, because the latter's orbit would be unstable. It's a pity that famed SF writer Larry Niven didn't know this when he wrote his novel _Ringworld_, because he then had to write a sequel explaining that the Ringworld needed rocket motors to keep it in orbit!
This series is so amazing, I have no words for it! I cant imagine how tough it is to really understand the history of so many decades and so many people, across so many conceptual topics.... and summarize into concise bite sized content which still retains the crux of the matter and the essential links across people and events. Amazed! I wish PBS or someone made a video documentary (they made many) with this content specifically.
I'm glad to see Oliver Heaviside getting some credit, and there's a lot more to him than being a pioneer in vector calculus. He was instrumental in what was to the founding of telecommunication theory. However, he was also very strange and eccentric and was never part of the science establishment. He was also, coincidentally, a nephew of Sir Charles Wheatstone, but only by the latter's marriage to his aunt. In his way, he was a more important figure than Tesla and certainly a much better mathematician.
@@joebrannon7548 He was, indeed a pioneering electrical engineer, but when it came to broadcasting power he went outside his area of expertise and he had some truly bizarre ideas abut physics.
@@joebrannon7548 both, both - an experimenting electrical engineer. He saw purpose in devices and 'upgraded' them as an engineer would, his imagination brought many real theories as a scientist would, but understanding the frequencies of alternating current is where his genius lies
No question that Heaviside was brilliant. He boiled Maxwell's twenty equations down to four using simplified vector notation. However, the act of separating the full product into dot and cross products may have been a mistake, a mistake which has delayed a deeper understanding of the physical space in which we live. What is a 'scalar' quantity? A quantity which has magnitude only, no direction. But perceived from the perspective of a four-dimensional space, it does indeed have direction - along the real axis. It's curious that our three-dimensional space exactly corresponds to the 'imaginary' part of Hamilton's quaternion space. Sort of makes you ponder that our space is a mind world.
@@joebrannon7548there were better engineers at GE as well as in Europe as well.... Linde and Simens were of the same era and did much more pioneering work... Linde's Liquification of Gas contributed more to economy than that of what Tesla did. There were petroleum and Automobile engineers as well... And Nuclear engineers too!
One of the delightful things that I’ve noticed with Kathy’s excellent presentations is that she presents a picture of her subjects, as they would have appeared at the time under discussion. Which really adds a lo5 of context!
Brilliant work kathy, you've pitched it at exactly the right level for an amateur physics fan like me. I could listen to you for hours,you make it entertaining and informative, with lots of history and the human element thrown in too. Many thanks from Yorkshire, England.
Hi Kathy: I am an electrical engineer (5 year degree) and I enjoy so much your videos. Of course I love, enjoy and very often use Maxwells equations and of course I can repeat them by heart. I want to tell you a professional secret: Maxwells equations are, really only three because, given the two curl equations and adopting as true the conservation of the charge (Div J=-d rho/dt) you get the two divergence ecuations. Continue your great videos
Ramana I Obviously agree with you hundred percent. Actually been surprised by how much studying the history has deepened my understanding of the physics.
A good effort. I was surprised not to hear the word 'quaternions' or J.W. Gibbs mentioned. Maxwell corresponded with Gibbs mainly regarding thermodynamics but in the Vector Algebra War, it was Gibbs that influenced Heaviside and whose reformulation of quaternion math became the vector algebra taught at Universities. I would be interested in seeing a video on the history of the Maxwell Equation from its inception to 2022; from those first 20 equations, use of quaternions by Maxwell and then scalar equations, Lorentz microscopic statistical formulation, 4 vector equations and after the life of Maxwell to differential and integral versions, tensor version, differential forms version and single equation of the Geometric Algebra formalism of David Hestenes.
@@joshicune It's a bit more than than a simpler notation, as it's a reformulation and the Heaviside vector calculus versions aren't exactly equivalent and are explicitly rotationally invariant. The Heaviside version is a lot easier to amend to be consistent with quantum mechanics and have also influenced the way that Maxwell's equations are interpreted. nb. this was not the first reformulation, as Maxwell's equations had been previously expressed in terms of quaternions.
Reflecting on my time studying electrodynamics, even years later, I still feel somewhat in awe of the beauty of Maxwell's equations, despite never fully comprehending their technicalities. Though I struggled to fully understand their meaning and application, there was a certain elegance and symmetry in their formulation that I found captivating. Even without a complete understanding, the equations hinted at a deep interconnectedness in the workings of the universe, which inspired a sense of wonder within me. Looking back, I realize that my fascination with the beauty of the equations was perhaps more important than my incomplete grasp of their technical details.
Ahhhh, James Clerk Maxwell, my all time favorite physicist. The beauty of Maxwell's equations, (first equations to survive special relativity), must have made many, many students fall in love with physics. And Faraday, what a great experimentalist! Thanks for doing a piece on both.
His equations not only survived special relativity, they contained a pointer to it, with that _c_ term, the speed of propagation, not being relative to anything, the way linear motion must be according to Newtonian relativity.
Thanks for your lucid explanations, Kathy. I was thinking that another angle to look at could be 'The History of C', i.e, how various scientists through the years have measured the speed of light - and how mathematicians have proved them right. This would bring a panoply of great names from Brahe onwards into the story.
Thanks Kathy. I studied math for three years and once knew what Maxwell's equations meant but my understanding has gone the way of my rock climbing ability
I'm in an intermediate e&m class and the history of physics is really interesting. I also have a book called "Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field" on my shelf, should get to reading.
Good Day, Kathy. Thank you so much for your videos. Just discovered your channel yesterday and am binging, you wicked woman! More, please, and thank you for the encouragement.
Faraday is one of my heroes; thank you so much for this clarification of his accomplishments and place in history! Really your’s is one of the very best physics channels on TH-cam! 😊
I read and heard Maxwell's stories, they never bored to me, like Einstein's stories. The genius of Maxwell is one generalization of the laws and made theory. In fact, in his book, he wrote "The theory I propose may, therefore, be called a theory of the Electromagnetic Field". Amongst these Maxwell's equation, my favorite part is Displacement current. I hope, Kathy can explain it with her enthusiastic voice.
Since discovering your channel my understanding of the world has become so much richer, thanks to you. I find it necessary to watch your videos over and over. You have a wonderful gift for teaching. Looking forward to your book on electricity.
Maxwell, Clerk-Maxwell, was a very talented mathematician from an early age. I doubt he needed much help with that. What is apparent is that he was very appreciative of the experimental processes and insights, whether from his wife or from Faraday. P.s. You can visit his home in Edinburgh with an appointment. There is more to see than the castle.
I can't argue with Feynman's view of the importance of Maxwell's Equations. As a physics grad student, I heard them rightly called the first successful unified field theory. Fred
Wow Kathy: I never saw the quote before of Einstein saying he stood on Maxwell's equations because I have been saying this for 50 years and the quote of Einstein I know was, I stood on the shoulders of giants to reach my theory. I saw and recognized he was following Maxwell's equations for the last 50 years and did not know he actually said this. Maxwell's equations pop out of Einstein's work on the structure of space/time. What is difficult for me is where James pulled these from which was Newton's work thesis. What I had heard was James erased his early work to only show the final theorem thus we have difficulty following his thought process. With Einstein he first builds the photo-electric effect thus producing the basis of quantum mechanics before he wrote his general relativity theory. Good job lady.
My nomination for the greatest practical physicist in history is James Maxwell. Others would have figured it all out eventually, but without those equations radio would have taken a very different path.
"...named it 'c', probably because they already had an 'a' and a 'b' in their paper" OMG - that is funny!!! Your videos are a recent discovery for me, and I'm loving them! Good stuff!
What a wonderful channel. I’m a 60 year old high school graduate with a strong desire for more knowledge. Your videos help educate me in many ways. New subscriber! Thank you so very much.
Thanks for this video. I love this sort of stuff. I always wonder if we should really be calling him "Clerk-Maxwell" rather than "Maxwell". As far as I know, he was born with the surname "Clerk" and appended the "Maxwell" as a condition of the inheritance of his country estate, giving him a form of double-barrelled surname. But then everyone refers to "Maxwell's Equations" and not "Clerk Maxwell's Equations" with the former being too well established and the latter too much of a mouthful. Mr C-M is in my eyes the Einstein of the 19th Century and deserves much, much better recognition than he has! 🙂
I have gone back and read how Maxwell developed his theory and it is difficult to say the least. It involved stresses and vortices but was grounded in Faraday's experimental work on lines of force. The modern treatment completely obscures just how astonishing Maxwell's insights were. He was The Man, no doubt about that. A small irony is that Maxwell was second Wrangler, beaten by P G Tait, who although a very good mathematician, never did anything as earth shattering as Maxwell.
Thanks for all the work you do on your instructional videos, especially this one. I would love similar video on the history of the "discovery" of permeability and permittivity...
Fascinating! Your historical background on scientific discoveries and principles, on the human beings behind them, is excellent, thanks for your efforts.
Just discovered your channel - and am hooked! Superb concise histories of Science's most important personalities. Your material ought to be compulsory viewing in all high schools - whether the students are studying science or not. I wish I had had a teacher like you Kathy - you're a gem and an asset to the global science community.
I am so glad that to have finally discovered your channel! As a lifelong and now retired EE, I so enjoy the historical side of electronics and electricity. BTW if you like this video you'll like the book Faraday, Maxwell and the electromagnetic field. Dave Erickson
Maxwell's work in Statistical Thermodynamics alone (A subject he developed & pioneered), would've been enough to put him down as one of the greats of mathematics/physics. Just to confuse things, Maxwell also has another set of relations in thermodynamics known as Maxwell's Relations.
Loved your video and subscribed! To me one of the most astonishing of scientific achievements was Maxwell's derivation of the speed of light strictly out of his equations alone. On par maybe with Dirac's postulation of antimatter based solely on the mathematics of his equations. I look forward to watching more of your work!
My favourite scientist by far. For those interested in the person, there is an excellent biography "The Man who Changed Everything, James Clerk Maxwell", published about 15 years ago. He grew-up in rural South-West Scotland and when he was sent to school in Edinburgh, his class-mates called him "Dafty" because of his simple ways and clothes. Second-hand copies of the book can be bought on-line for just a few £. Sadly, he is not well known in his native Scotland. One has to wonder why.
"It is of great advantage to the student of any subject to read the original memoirs on that subject, for science is always most completely assimilated when it is in the nascent state..." (A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, 1873) - James Clerk Maxwell
Well done, a very underappreciated event in history and science history - Still no really good Biography of Maxwell and his books are hard going due to the old math symbolism and ideas.
Kathy you're interesting, that's it; just plain interesting in a very VERY cool way. Thank you for your insightful research into a confusing time in history. Thank you
Hi Cathy! I would lie to congratulate you for mentioning Oliver Heaviside and the real story behind Maxwell's equations. Few people seem to know this and the British still hate Heaviside and avoid his name at all costs. Even after more than hundred years...
Great History, Kathy, thank you! I’d like to see how Maxwell’s component equations “fold” into Heaviside’s compact and elegant notation. Perhaps I should do this myself. I remember feeling daunted or disinterested by the Dover editions (2 volumes) of Maxwell’s works….perhaps now I am mature enough to digest them? (Oh, and “Weber” I have never heard pronounced the way you do…. As far as I know the German pronunciation is more like “Vay-Ber” almost like vapor! And the American is more like Webber… like a spider building a web!)
Faraday described "Tubes of Force", and it is Maxwell who changed that into "Lines of force" which is why the math for his electromagnetic theory is so complicated. Faraday's version is a lot simpler, though not mathematical much like Feynman diagrams are to quantum/particle theory, which is only accepted because you didn't argue with Feynman who was himself a better physicist and just-as-good mathematician than/as Maxwell and William Thompson. The Original Cinderella Man Michael Faraday was not part of the establishment and didn't have the credentials to be what the cognoscenti decide is what makes a "scientist". But without his intuition and brilliant observations and experimental work and detailed notes and his very open Nature (He refused bribes worth millions) James Maxwell and William Thompson (among others) would just be footnotes in history. Physics/chemistry/mathematics, in those days, were more like nationalistic pastimes and without these guys working that way, we wouldn't of had the Great War and World War II. If the scientist had conducted themselves like Faraday, things would have had time to settle down, which is why, in my opinion, he was a thousand times the scientist than these guys were. He is the gold/platinum standard for the meaning of the life of being a scientist.
Thank you so much for the video. I wish there were longer biography of him. I love that he has statue of him with his dog. Sad that Katherine is not next to him 😢
How lucky! I just watched The History Guy do a video on James Clerk Maxwell! When it finished up pops your video! Of course i watched and then subscribed! Look for me looking over your shoulder!
Could you please do a video about Oliver Heaviside, the person who developed the four equations which were derived from many equations that Maxwell developed.
uber1337hakz Heaviside is amazing and totally deserves his own video. Unfortunately, I am basing these videos on my first draft of my book and I didn’t go into him enough. When I am done with my videos I might research him more and then do a video on him as well (although as my book is like 400 pages I need to be removing people not adding them!). But Oliver is both too quirky and too amazing to ignore. Too many projects, too little time.
I understand that a lot of Heaviside's mathematical results were published without proof. He defended this approach by saying that he would continue to eat despite not understanding how digestion works. You can Google the exact quote
This is the video that found me this great series! I was trying to figure out how Maxwell figures out such an accurate estimation of the speed of light.
Fantastic video!!! Have you read the book “Oliver Heavyside, Sage in Solitute” by Dr. Paul Nahin? He was a professor of mine at UNH and his book on Heavyside is absolutely fascinating. Worth the read and I think it’s still available on Amazon…
Excellent videos. Subscribed. This information had become addictive! My suspicion is that Maxwell's laws are more likely to be Dewar's laws...but don't tell anyone.
Dear Kathy! I love your approach to explain science through its history. Back then knowledge was always born by observations of phanomenon in nature and/or experiments. This for itself did not require math. But the great benefit of math, which Maxwell added to Faradays knowledge, was a new capabilty to calculate constructions of products! But math can always ONLY help to describe, but never ever to explain. And here we are on the backside of the scientific medal ... because nowadays physicists believe that mathematical symmetries can tell us anything about nature. What an illusion ... ! ... Actually I had read the book "Science at the Crossroads" from Herbert Dingle (ex-president of the Royal Astronomical Society). He mentioned the term "displacement current", which Maxwell had invented in order to keep the "beauty" (symmetry) of his famous 20 equations. Could you do a video about the scientific background of this term "displacement current"? ...
Hans, Thank you so much for your comment and I couldn’t agree more. I love mathematics and I’m comfortable with it but teaching everything through mathematics doing a great disservice to science and to learning. Right now I have an incredibly long list of things that I’m planning to make videos on so I don’t think I can get to displacement current for a while I’m really sorry. I will put it on the long list. (I guess it is better to have too many ideas than too few) cheers Kathy
@@Kathy_Loves_Physics ... Kathy, thanks for your prompt response! I should confess that I'd an additional thought in mind for my request, because Herbert Dingle pointed with his mentioning of the problem "displacement current" to the potential cause why the "none-result" of the famous Michelson-Morley interferometer experiment is regularly miss-interpreted in this strange way as Lorentz had done it ... adding to FitzGeralds idea of "length-contraction", triggered by a debate with Heaviside about his so called "Heaviside-ellipsoid", his own additional idea of "time-dilation" just to "rescue" the just postulated "constantcy" of the speed-of-light ... ! ... in order to "rescue" his speculation about the "ether" ... an idea which Einstein simply dropped without deriving his own version of suitable math equations dealing with it. Einstein introduced instead his idea of the "observer", which is just a new term for his "reference frame at rest" ... and copied Lorentz's transformations anyway ... These thoughts have driven me to write a small paper, why I am convinced by now that Einstein's theory of "Special Relativity" is false ... - source: www.slideshare.net/HansJVetter/falsification-of-einsteins-theory-of-special-relativity-249745427 ... it was Lorentz's theory of electrodynamics which added his transformations to the Maxwell'ian version of electrodynamics ... and the consequences for whole scientific fields like e.g. astrophysics are quite dramatic if Einstein's idea about "relativity" turn out to be false ... Did you know? ... that Ernest Rutherford took Einstein's idea of "relativity" as a joke ... and Werner Heisenberg mentioned that the "contraction/dilation"-phenomenons only seems to be "real" for the "observer" ... and the inventor of the first atomic clock (caesium), Louis Essen, who's work caused a re-definition of the SI-unit "second", denied the existence of such a phanomenon as "time-dilation" ... - source: od.lk/f/OV80NjcxMTI1NV9rMkJwZQ Please forgive me my audacity ... ;-)
Absolutely love your work. But giving Faraday credit for Maxwell's addition of the displacement current ignores one of Maxwell's most important contributions.
I must say that this part of the history of electromagnetism is from me much more gripping than the famous electric engineers fighting each other over the ways to transmit electric power.
I've just found your channel today and your channel helps a lot! However I've been wondering if light as an electromagnetic wave was the conclusion of experiments done by many physicists then why did Faraday decide to use light in his experiment with the magnet that altered polarized light. how did he know that light was actually an electromagnetic wave?
I have always felt that tying these developmental ideas together historically is the best way to teach them. It gives human context, then the detail, however correct, is more readily understandable and can be appreciated more clearly. Great work Kathy.
DavidMcKay77 obviously, I agree 💯
Correct. Most teaching is done without much of the human interest stories and that results in very dry material. This contributes to many subjects being seen as boring.
Stokes therom, " like and irish potatoe with eyes coming out all over"
Dr. Donald W Detes senior level EM class NMSU 1974
Context is super important and the tight curriculum schedules always mean we never get to hear about them in traditional classes
Science history is a lot more interesting than being told how many concubines a useless king had.
I am completely hypnotized by Kathy as I am now binge watching this series
All part of my evil plan. Bwa ha ha
"I suppose I can stay up that late" made me laugh out loud; I'm quite a night owl myself. Kathy, this series is just great! Very clear and informative, and fun too.
A few notes on Maxwell's time in Aberdeen from an Aberdonian! First, locals pronounce Marischal College as "Marshall College", i.e. it's just an older spelling of the same word. The name comes from the college being founded in the 1500s by an "Earl Marischal of Scotland" (think military governor, not a policeman!). Maxwell had the chair of Natural Philosphy there between 1856-1860. In 1860 Marischal College merged with Kings College to create the University of Aberdeen, which now had one physics professor too many. Kings had a well connected prof that nobody now remembers, while Marischal College had the gifted but very young Maxwell... so they got rid of Maxwell! It was while in Aberdeen that Maxwell proved that Saturn's rings must be formed from lots of little rocks, rather than a solid band, because the latter's orbit would be unstable. It's a pity that famed SF writer Larry Niven didn't know this when he wrote his novel _Ringworld_, because he then had to write a sequel explaining that the Ringworld needed rocket motors to keep it in orbit!
Speaking of pronunciation, Maxwell's middle name is spoken "Clark" (as in Lewis and Clark).
"she has no statue" 😢
This series is so amazing, I have no words for it! I cant imagine how tough it is to really understand the history of so many decades and so many people, across so many conceptual topics.... and summarize into concise bite sized content which still retains the crux of the matter and the essential links across people and events. Amazed! I wish PBS or someone made a video documentary (they made many) with this content specifically.
The first time I got the complete story!
Thanks Kathy!
Excellent presentation. Years ago I read the book 'The Maxwellians'. Great book to read on long flights.
I'm glad to see Oliver Heaviside getting some credit, and there's a lot more to him than being a pioneer in vector calculus. He was instrumental in what was to the founding of telecommunication theory. However, he was also very strange and eccentric and was never part of the science establishment. He was also, coincidentally, a nephew of Sir Charles Wheatstone, but only by the latter's marriage to his aunt. In his way, he was a more important figure than Tesla and certainly a much better mathematician.
Can I correctly say that Tesla was not so much a scientist as he was an engineer? ... and a great one at that...?
@@joebrannon7548 He was, indeed a pioneering electrical engineer, but when it came to broadcasting power he went outside his area of expertise and he had some truly bizarre ideas abut physics.
@@joebrannon7548 both, both - an experimenting electrical engineer. He saw purpose in devices and 'upgraded' them as an engineer would, his imagination brought many real theories as a scientist would, but understanding the frequencies of alternating current is where his genius lies
No question that Heaviside was brilliant. He boiled Maxwell's twenty equations down to four using simplified vector notation. However, the act of separating the full product into dot and cross products may have been a mistake, a mistake which has delayed a deeper understanding of the physical space in which we live. What is a 'scalar' quantity? A quantity which has magnitude only, no direction. But perceived from the perspective of a four-dimensional space, it does indeed have direction - along the real axis.
It's curious that our three-dimensional space exactly corresponds to the 'imaginary' part of Hamilton's quaternion space. Sort of makes you ponder that our space is a mind world.
@@joebrannon7548there were better engineers at GE as well as in Europe as well.... Linde and Simens were of the same era and did much more pioneering work... Linde's Liquification of Gas contributed more to economy than that of what Tesla did.
There were petroleum and Automobile engineers as well... And Nuclear engineers too!
One of the delightful things that I’ve noticed with Kathy’s excellent presentations is that she presents a picture of her subjects, as they would have appeared at the time under discussion. Which really adds a lo5 of context!
Brilliant work kathy, you've pitched it at exactly the right level for an amateur physics fan like me. I could listen to you for hours,you make it entertaining and informative, with lots of history and the human element thrown in too. Many thanks from Yorkshire, England.
These videos are an absolute gem! It's for sure one of the best ways to get someone intrigued by science that I have come across.
Hi Kathy: I am an electrical engineer (5 year degree) and I enjoy so much your videos. Of course I love, enjoy and very often use Maxwells equations and of course I can repeat them by heart. I want to tell you a professional secret: Maxwells equations are, really only three because, given the two curl equations and adopting as true the conservation of the charge (Div J=-d rho/dt) you get the two divergence ecuations. Continue your great videos
It so great to get all the bibliographical information with each of these stories of discovery! The scientists themselves become so much more human.
Charles Carlson you can probably tell the folks I like (Faraday, Maxwell) and ones I don’t (Morse)
Everything has history. History makes physics more interesting and real.
Ramana I Obviously agree with you hundred percent. Actually been surprised by how much studying the history has deepened my understanding of the physics.
A good effort. I was surprised not to hear the word 'quaternions' or J.W. Gibbs mentioned. Maxwell corresponded with Gibbs mainly regarding thermodynamics but in the Vector Algebra War, it was Gibbs that influenced Heaviside and whose reformulation of quaternion math became the vector algebra taught at Universities. I would be interested in seeing a video on the history of the Maxwell Equation from its inception to 2022; from those first 20 equations, use of quaternions by Maxwell and then scalar equations, Lorentz microscopic statistical formulation, 4 vector equations and after the life of Maxwell to differential and integral versions, tensor version, differential forms version and single equation of the Geometric Algebra formalism of David Hestenes.
What an excellent report!
Heavyside, with a High School education, created Maxwell's equations.
A true math genius also.
Otie Brown Heavysude was such an interesting fellow and he is on my list of people to make a video about ... eventually.
Common, Maxwell created his equations. This is just another simpler notation.
@@joshicune It's a bit more than than a simpler notation, as it's a reformulation and the Heaviside vector calculus versions aren't exactly equivalent and are explicitly rotationally invariant. The Heaviside version is a lot easier to amend to be consistent with quantum mechanics and have also influenced the way that Maxwell's equations are interpreted.
nb. this was not the first reformulation, as Maxwell's equations had been previously expressed in terms of quaternions.
I love the history lesson. But i would also love if Kathy would explain more on the physics and maths! Thanks for your video!!
Reflecting on my time studying electrodynamics, even years later, I still feel somewhat in awe of the beauty of Maxwell's equations, despite never fully comprehending their technicalities. Though I struggled to fully understand their meaning and application, there was a certain elegance and symmetry in their formulation that I found captivating. Even without a complete understanding, the equations hinted at a deep interconnectedness in the workings of the universe, which inspired a sense of wonder within me. Looking back, I realize that my fascination with the beauty of the equations was perhaps more important than my incomplete grasp of their technical details.
Another triumph, Kathy! This video is a great tribute to James Maxwell. Thanks!
Ahhhh, James Clerk Maxwell, my all time favorite physicist.
The beauty of Maxwell's equations, (first equations to survive special relativity), must have made many, many students fall in love with physics.
And Faraday, what a great experimentalist!
Thanks for doing a piece on both.
They used to call themselves Maxwellians.
His equations not only survived special relativity, they contained a pointer to it, with that _c_ term, the speed of propagation, not being relative to anything, the way linear motion must be according to Newtonian relativity.
Thanks for your lucid explanations, Kathy. I was thinking that another angle to look at could be 'The History of C', i.e, how various scientists through the years have measured the speed of light - and how mathematicians have proved them right. This would bring a panoply of great names from Brahe onwards into the story.
These vids are wonderful I don't know how I missed them when they were made..
I love the way all these famous scientists are linked and BIG thank you for bringing them back to life. 😘
Thanks Kathy. I studied math for three years and once knew what Maxwell's equations meant but my understanding has gone the way of my rock climbing ability
One of my favourite channels on TH-cam. Kathy's narrative style is so compelling and engaging.
Aww thanks.
Thank you so much for this I now understand much better, IT WAS HIS WIFE.
I'm in an intermediate e&m class and the history of physics is really interesting. I also have a book called "Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field" on my shelf, should get to reading.
Victor P. That’s a good book. I recommend it I’m writing a book myself but it is in publishing purgatory so I don’t know when you could read it.
Good Day, Kathy. Thank you so much for your videos. Just discovered your channel yesterday and am binging, you wicked woman! More, please, and thank you for the encouragement.
Faraday is one of my heroes; thank you so much for this clarification of his accomplishments and place in history! Really your’s is one of the very best physics channels on TH-cam! 😊
I read and heard Maxwell's stories, they never bored to me, like Einstein's stories. The genius of Maxwell is one generalization of the laws and made theory. In fact, in his book, he wrote "The theory I propose may, therefore, be called a theory of the Electromagnetic Field". Amongst these Maxwell's equation, my favorite part is Displacement current. I hope, Kathy can explain it with her enthusiastic voice.
one of the many geniuses of this channel is the use of accurate images. even showing mercury when referencing faraday’s mercury poisoning 😢. ❤❤❤❤❤❤
Since discovering your channel my understanding of the world has become so much richer, thanks to you. I find it necessary to watch your videos over and over. You have a wonderful gift for teaching. Looking forward to your book on electricity.
Thank you!
As just someone interested in learning more about physics I really like your videos. You are a great teacher!
Maxwell, Clerk-Maxwell, was a very talented mathematician from an early age. I doubt he needed much help with that. What is apparent is that he was very appreciative of the experimental processes and insights, whether from his wife or from Faraday.
P.s.
You can visit his home in Edinburgh with an appointment. There is more to see than the castle.
incredible how humanly beautiful all of these colorful geniuses were❤❤❤❤
I can't argue with Feynman's view of the importance of Maxwell's Equations. As a physics grad student, I heard them rightly called the first successful unified field theory.
Fred
Wow Kathy: I never saw the quote before of Einstein saying he stood on Maxwell's equations because I have been saying this for 50 years and the quote of Einstein I know was, I stood on the shoulders of giants to reach my theory. I saw and recognized he was following Maxwell's equations for the last 50 years and did not know he actually said this. Maxwell's equations pop out of Einstein's work on the structure of space/time. What is difficult for me is where James pulled these from which was Newton's work thesis. What I had heard was James erased his early work to only show the final theorem thus we have difficulty following his thought process. With Einstein he first builds the photo-electric effect thus producing the basis of quantum mechanics before he wrote his general relativity theory. Good job lady.
My nomination for the greatest practical physicist in history is James Maxwell. Others would have figured it all out eventually, but without those equations radio would have taken a very different path.
The equations shown in the video background are not the original Maxwell Equations, but are a reformulated version written in modern vector notation.
"...named it 'c', probably because they already had an 'a' and a 'b' in their paper" OMG - that is funny!!! Your videos are a recent discovery for me, and I'm loving them! Good stuff!
Lovin all your passion for EE history. Good seeking. Love Faraday so much now. Respect rememberence of innovation invention, respect!
What a wonderful channel. I’m a 60 year old high school graduate with a strong desire for more knowledge. Your videos help educate me in many ways. New subscriber! Thank you so very much.
Thanks for this video. I love this sort of stuff. I always wonder if we should really be calling him "Clerk-Maxwell" rather than "Maxwell". As far as I know, he was born with the surname "Clerk" and appended the "Maxwell" as a condition of the inheritance of his country estate, giving him a form of double-barrelled surname. But then everyone refers to "Maxwell's Equations" and not "Clerk Maxwell's Equations" with the former being too well established and the latter too much of a mouthful. Mr C-M is in my eyes the Einstein of the 19th Century and deserves much, much better recognition than he has! 🙂
I have gone back and read how Maxwell developed his theory and it is difficult to say the least. It involved stresses and vortices but was grounded in Faraday's experimental work on lines of force. The modern treatment completely obscures just how astonishing Maxwell's insights were. He was The Man, no doubt about that. A small irony is that Maxwell was second Wrangler, beaten by P G Tait, who although a very good mathematician, never did anything as earth shattering as Maxwell.
Thanks for all the work you do on your instructional videos, especially this one. I would love similar video on the history of the "discovery" of permeability and permittivity...
Fascinating! Your historical background on scientific discoveries and principles, on the human beings behind them, is excellent, thanks for your efforts.
Just discovered your channel - and am hooked! Superb concise histories of Science's most important personalities. Your material ought to be compulsory viewing in all high schools - whether the students are studying science or not. I wish I had had a teacher like you Kathy - you're a gem and an asset to the global science community.
I am so glad that to have finally discovered your channel! As a lifelong and now retired EE, I so enjoy the historical side of electronics and electricity. BTW if you like this video you'll like the book Faraday, Maxwell and the electromagnetic field.
Dave Erickson
Maxwell's work in Statistical Thermodynamics alone (A subject he developed & pioneered), would've been enough to put him down as one of the greats of mathematics/physics. Just to confuse things, Maxwell also has another set of relations in thermodynamics known as Maxwell's Relations.
It is said that his work in Thermodynamics helped him derive the theory of the electromagnetic field.
Loved your video and subscribed! To me one of the most astonishing of scientific achievements was Maxwell's derivation of the speed of light strictly out of his equations alone. On par maybe with Dirac's postulation of antimatter based solely on the mathematics of his equations. I look forward to watching more of your work!
Shouting From The Rooftops so glad you liked it. I was so delighted to find how charming Maxwell was.
My favourite scientist by far. For those interested in the person, there is an excellent biography "The Man who Changed Everything, James Clerk Maxwell", published about 15 years ago. He grew-up in rural South-West Scotland and when he was sent to school in Edinburgh, his class-mates called him "Dafty" because of his simple ways and clothes. Second-hand copies of the book can be bought on-line for just a few £. Sadly, he is not well known in his native Scotland. One has to wonder why.
I also find it strange why he is not that well known or mentioned in Scotland, but I guess him having been a devoted Christian is rather problematic.
I love Maxwell - I have an autographed letter to a doctor by Maxwell requesting a visit to his wife.
One of your best videos ever. I'm binge watching.
This is a brilliant series thank you Kathy
I absolutely love your delivery and your subject selection.
"It is of great advantage to the student of any subject to read the original memoirs on that subject, for science is always most completely assimilated when it is in the nascent state..." (A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, 1873) - James Clerk Maxwell
Alex Peek I’m starting to think that Maxwell fellow was pretty smart.
I am loving the whole series. I wish someone did a similar thing for maths as well.
What a wonderful episode ! Thanks !!
"I suppose I could stay up that late."
My own preferred method of making early morning appointments.
This is guy is one of my heroes. And he seems to famous here in the US that there is a coffee brand named after him.
Well done, a very underappreciated event in history and science history - Still no really good Biography of Maxwell and his books are hard going due to the old math symbolism and ideas.
combination of physics theory and history background story, very unique channel. like it!
These videos should be part of first year college syllabus for several engineering degree programs.
Truly genius. He solved twenty interconnected differential equations involving 20variables. Just wow .
Kathy you're interesting, that's it; just plain interesting in a very VERY cool way. Thank you for your insightful research into a confusing time in history. Thank you
Faraday and Maxwell are my favorites.
I just like magnets and sparks.
Exactly the channel im looking for, can’t wait to dig deeper
Welcome aboard!
Hi Cathy! I would lie to congratulate you for mentioning Oliver Heaviside and the real story behind Maxwell's equations. Few people seem to know this and the British still hate Heaviside and avoid his name at all costs. Even after more than hundred years...
Great History, Kathy, thank you! I’d like to see how Maxwell’s component equations “fold” into Heaviside’s compact and elegant notation. Perhaps I should do this myself. I remember feeling daunted or disinterested by the Dover editions (2 volumes) of Maxwell’s works….perhaps now I am mature enough to digest them? (Oh, and “Weber” I have never heard pronounced the way you do…. As far as I know the German pronunciation is more like “Vay-Ber” almost like vapor! And the American is more like Webber… like a spider building a web!)
Great story! I can see that you are really passionate about it and I'd like to thank you for educating us all
History of Physics. Awesome video 👍
I see partial differentiation symbol and gradient descent symbol, bravo.
Faraday described "Tubes of Force", and it is Maxwell who changed that into "Lines of force" which is why the math for his electromagnetic theory is so complicated. Faraday's version is a lot simpler, though not mathematical much like Feynman diagrams are to quantum/particle theory, which is only accepted because you didn't argue with Feynman who was himself a better physicist and just-as-good mathematician than/as Maxwell and William Thompson.
The Original Cinderella Man
Michael Faraday was not part of the establishment and didn't have the credentials to be what the cognoscenti decide is what makes a "scientist".
But without his intuition and brilliant observations and experimental work and detailed notes and his very open Nature (He refused bribes worth millions) James Maxwell and William Thompson (among others) would just be footnotes in history.
Physics/chemistry/mathematics, in those days, were more like nationalistic pastimes and without these guys working that way, we wouldn't of had the Great War and World War II.
If the scientist had conducted themselves like Faraday, things would have had time to settle down, which is why, in my opinion, he was a thousand times the scientist than these guys were.
He is the gold/platinum standard for the meaning of the life of being a scientist.
Maxwell definitely sounds like someone you would like to have a few wee drams with :) - great video!
Oh definitely
It's been a honor to be nicknamed Maxwell by my Ceylonese HS Physics teacher. But in no way can in stand in Maxwell's shoes.:)
Thank you so much for the video. I wish there were longer biography of him. I love that he has statue of him with his dog. Sad that Katherine is not next to him 😢
How lucky! I just watched The History Guy do a video on James Clerk Maxwell! When it finished up pops your video! Of course i watched and then subscribed! Look for me looking over your shoulder!
Could you please do a video about Oliver Heaviside, the person who developed the four equations which were derived from many equations that Maxwell developed.
uber1337hakz Heaviside is amazing and totally deserves his own video. Unfortunately, I am basing these videos on my first draft of my book and I didn’t go into him enough. When I am done with my videos I might research him more and then do a video on him as well (although as my book is like 400 pages I need to be removing people not adding them!).
But Oliver is both too quirky and too amazing to ignore. Too many projects, too little time.
I understand that a lot of Heaviside's mathematical results were published without proof. He defended this approach by saying that he would continue to eat despite not understanding how digestion works. You can Google the exact quote
This is the video that found me this great series! I was trying to figure out how Maxwell figures out such an accurate estimation of the speed of light.
I used to wonder that too. So glad I started with Faraday first as I don't think he would make that much sense without it.
This really is the best series since James Burke wrote Connections.
Thanks- what a lovely compliment
Another great video. Thank you.
Maxwell is my favorite. If I had a son then I would name him Maxwell 😍
A wonderful series of lectures Kathy, simply superb.
By the way, in the UK, Clerk is pronounced Clark, so his name is pronounced James Clark Maxwell 🙂
Fantastic video!!! Have you read the book “Oliver Heavyside, Sage in Solitute” by Dr. Paul Nahin? He was a professor of mine at UNH and his book on Heavyside is absolutely fascinating. Worth the read and I think it’s still available on Amazon…
this is really helpful for undestanding masxwell eqayation
JUst love that Right Hand Rule. Duh. . . . . . . Please please . . . . . .
Oh wow! I had no idea you had done Max a video!!! Disregard prior communication.
I have been searching for contents like this 😃
Thanks for this wonderful video!
hank s you are welcome. Thanks for the great quote in your other comment
Goose bumps “ how maxwell faraday and Helmholtz “ inspired hertzyy
Excellent videos. Subscribed. This information had become addictive!
My suspicion is that Maxwell's laws are more likely to be Dewar's laws...but don't tell anyone.
Dear Kathy! I love your approach to explain science through its history. Back then knowledge was always born by observations of phanomenon in nature and/or experiments. This for itself did not require math. But the great benefit of math, which Maxwell added to Faradays knowledge, was a new capabilty to calculate constructions of products! But math can always ONLY help to describe, but never ever to explain. And here we are on the backside of the scientific medal ... because nowadays physicists believe that mathematical symmetries can tell us anything about nature. What an illusion ... ! ...
Actually I had read the book "Science at the Crossroads" from Herbert Dingle (ex-president of the Royal Astronomical Society). He mentioned the term "displacement current", which Maxwell had invented in order to keep the "beauty" (symmetry) of his famous 20 equations. Could you do a video about the scientific background of this term "displacement current"? ...
Hans, Thank you so much for your comment and I couldn’t agree more. I love mathematics and I’m comfortable with it but teaching everything through mathematics doing a great disservice to science and to learning. Right now I have an incredibly long list of things that I’m planning to make videos on so I don’t think I can get to displacement current for a while I’m really sorry. I will put it on the long list. (I guess it is better to have too many ideas than too few) cheers Kathy
@@Kathy_Loves_Physics ... Kathy, thanks for your prompt response! I should confess that I'd an additional thought in mind for my request, because Herbert Dingle pointed with his mentioning of the problem "displacement current" to the potential cause why the "none-result" of the famous Michelson-Morley interferometer experiment is regularly miss-interpreted in this strange way as Lorentz had done it ... adding to FitzGeralds idea of "length-contraction", triggered by a debate with Heaviside about his so called "Heaviside-ellipsoid", his own additional idea of "time-dilation" just to "rescue" the just postulated "constantcy" of the speed-of-light ... ! ... in order to "rescue" his speculation about the "ether" ... an idea which Einstein simply dropped without deriving his own version of suitable math equations dealing with it. Einstein introduced instead his idea of the "observer", which is just a new term for his "reference frame at rest" ... and copied Lorentz's transformations anyway ...
These thoughts have driven me to write a small paper, why I am convinced by now that Einstein's theory of "Special Relativity" is false ... - source:
www.slideshare.net/HansJVetter/falsification-of-einsteins-theory-of-special-relativity-249745427
... it was Lorentz's theory of electrodynamics which added his transformations to the Maxwell'ian version of electrodynamics ... and the consequences for whole scientific fields like e.g. astrophysics are quite dramatic if Einstein's idea about "relativity" turn out to be false ...
Did you know? ... that Ernest Rutherford took Einstein's idea of "relativity" as a joke ... and Werner Heisenberg mentioned that the "contraction/dilation"-phenomenons only seems to be "real" for the "observer" ... and the inventor of the first atomic clock (caesium), Louis Essen, who's work caused a re-definition of the SI-unit "second", denied the existence of such a phanomenon as "time-dilation" ... - source: od.lk/f/OV80NjcxMTI1NV9rMkJwZQ
Please forgive me my audacity ... ;-)
Absolutely love your work. But giving Faraday credit for Maxwell's addition of the displacement current ignores one of Maxwell's most important contributions.
Just recently found your videos, and love them. I have read that the speed of light is C from Celeritas which means swift in Latin
I might be wrong on the origin of c for speed of light and it was just a coincidence. Sorry.
Thanks for your video i so much enjoyed watching it.
great video, glad i found this channel :)
I must say that this part of the history of electromagnetism is from me much more gripping than the famous electric engineers fighting each other over the ways to transmit electric power.
I've just found your channel today and your channel helps a lot! However I've been wondering if light as an electromagnetic wave was the conclusion of experiments done by many physicists then why did Faraday decide to use light in his experiment with the magnet that altered polarized light. how did he know that light was actually an electromagnetic wave?
@Kathy Loves Physics & History: could you please provide links to your resources, papers, etc. I'm unable to locate Weber's paper. Thanks! :)
Informative.. Thanks
Moncy Varghese Kottayam you are welcome. Wasn’t Maxwell charming? He is one of my favorites.