James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) as a student at Trinity College, Cambridge
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Below, I offer some notes from Carlo Rovelli, Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity<\/em>, translated by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre (Penguin, 2017), mingled with some comments of my own. \u00a0Carlo Rovelli is an Italian theoretical physicist who has worked in both Italy and the United States and who, at least at the time the book was published, was the director of the quantum gravity research group at the Centre de physique th\u00e9orique in Marseilles, France. \u00a0His previous book for a popular audience, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics<\/em>, was an international bestseller that was translated into at least forty-one languages beyond its original Italian:<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
The great Isaac Newton gave us a world made up of space, time, and particles. \u00a0But he was baffled as to how particles, or objects made from particles, could interact at a distance. \u00a0The crack of a ball on a bat, and the ball\u2019s subsequent flight into deep center field, are intelligible as direct interactions between objects in contact with each other. \u00a0But how does the Earth control the motions of the Moon? \u00a0How does the Moon govern Earth\u2019s tides?<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Enter Faraday and Maxwell, whom Rovelli calls \u201cscience\u2019s oddest couple\u201d (39):<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Michael Faraday is an impoverished Londoner without formal education, who works first in a bookbindery, then in a laboratory, where he excels, gains his master\u2019s confidence and grows into the most brilliant experimenter of nineteenth-century physics and its greatest visionary. \u00a0Without knowing mathematics, he writes one of the best books of physics ever written, virtually devoid of equations. \u00a0He sees physics with his mind\u2019s eye, and with his mind\u2019s eye creates worlds. \u00a0James Clerk Maxwell is a rich Scottish aristocrat and one of the greatest mathematicians of the century. \u00a0Despite being separated by a gulf in intellectual style as well as social origin, they succeed in understanding each other \u2014 and, together, combining two kinds of genius, they open the door to modern physics. \u00a0(39-40)<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Working with glass rods, magnets, iron cages, bobbins, and needles, Faraday visualizes lines of force \u2014 fields \u2014 existing between objects. \u00a0He\u2019s now given us a world of space, time, particles, and fields<\/em>. \u00a0Distant objects, it\u2019s true, don\u2019t directly affect each other. \u00a0But their interacting fields<\/em> do. \u00a0And Maxwell, recognizing the genius of Faraday\u2019s insight, translates the verbal notion of \u201cFaraday lines\u201d of force into a page of equations, now known simply as \u201cMaxwell\u2019s equations,\u201d which describe the behavior of electric and magnetic fields.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Today, Maxwell\u2019s equations are used daily to describe all electric and magnetic phenomena, to design antennae, radios, electric engines and computers. \u00a0And this is not all: these same equations are needed to explain how atoms function (they are held together by electrical forces), and why the particles of the material that forms a stone adhere together, or how the Sun works. \u00a0They describe an amazing number and range of phenomena. \u00a0Almost everything that we witness taking place \u2014 with the exception of gravity, but little else besides \u2014 is well described by Maxwell\u2019s equations.<\/span><\/p>\nBut there is more. \u00a0There is still what is perhaps the most beautiful success of science: Maxwell\u2019s equations tell us what light is. \u00a0(44-45)<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Only a few years later, these waves, anticipated theoretically by Maxwell, will be revealed by the German physicist Heinrich Hertz; and just a few years later still, Guglielmo Marconi builds the first radio.<\/span><\/p>\nAll modern communications technology \u2014 radio, television, telephones, computers, satellites, wi-fi, the internet, etc. \u2014 is an application of Maxwell\u2019s prediction; the Maxwell equations are the basis for all calculations made by telecommunications engineers. \u00a0(46)<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
They are an astonishing illustration of the power of mathematics \u2014 a power well worth reflection \u2014 to describe the physical world, even in advance of empirical observation:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Our entire current technology is founded on the use of a physical thing \u2014 electromagnetic waves \u2014 which was not discovered empirically; it was predicted by Maxwell, simply by searching for the mathematical description accounting for the intuition Faraday got from bobbins and needles. \u00a0(47)<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Below, I offer some notes from Carlo Rovelli, Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity, translated by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre (Penguin, 2017), mingled with some comments of my own. \u00a0Carlo Rovelli is an Italian theoretical physicist who has worked in both Italy and the United States […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9724,9709,9703,9736,9712,9715,9706,2193,3256,9700,9733,9721,9727,9730,2195,9718,7536,2197,5571],"class_list":["post-84233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-electromagnetic-waves","tag-electromagnetism","tag-faraday","tag-faraday-lines","tag-field","tag-fields","tag-james-clerk","tag-light","tag-maxwell","tag-michael","tag-modern","tag-particles","tag-physicist","tag-physicists","tag-physics","tag-space","tag-time","tag-wave","tag-waves"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"Michael](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2020\/04\/1024px-M_Faraday_Th_Phillips_oil_1842.jpg\")
<\/a>