History of the Study of Magnetism

History of the Study of Magnetism Because magnetic fields were not discovered until recently, the history of how they were discovered is quite interesting, and informative. 1.1 The Detection of Magnetic Fields We begin by giving an empirical history of the development of electromagnetic theory. As stated, people had long known that magnetic fields existed, but the only known source of these fields were permanent magnets, and no link was made to electricity. In the early 1800…

…magnetic fields: Magnetic fields only act on moving charges From these two statements, we may think of electricity and magnetism in the following way. Electricity is the study of the interaction between static charges. Magnetism is the study of the interaction between moving charges. Both result from the existence of electric charge, and can simply be seen as different topics in the study of electric charge. It goes without saying that the two are interrelated.