Salipot, Renee Adrianne P.

Advanced Electromagnetism
BS Electronics Engineering Friday (2-5PM) / Engr. Purio

REACTION PAPER:

THE LONG ROAD TO MAXWELL’S EQUATIONS

Reading thoroughly through the article made me realize that

James Clerk Maxwell, one of the people whom we look up to in our
field, started humbly just like anyone. Formulating the base of
the advancement of technology today, he went through too much.
Maxwell developed the first unified theory in physics showing
that electricity and magnetism are connected. Though his theory
brought so much prominence to the modern technology, it was
still not on solid ground even after his death on the year 1879.

The four refined equations, which depict the behavior of

light, current flow and magnetism functions, which we all know
today were not only through the effort of Maxwell himself but
also of a lot of curious and determined minds. Maxwell, of
course, doesn’t just go through contributing a great amount of
his time and effort without basis. He was a very inquisitive lad
who also has his strengths and weaknesses. Before the theory of
electromagnetism reached its peak point which opened the road to
great accomplishments in the field of physics,
telecommunications and electrical engineering, some were against
the theory whilst other helped Maxwell proved what he left even
after during his time.

Maxwell’s first presentation of his theory was so perplex

that it was largely neglected that time. Today, as we learn
about the apparent light, we know that it is a chunk of wide
electromagnetic spectrum, whose radiation are of oscillating
electric and magnetic fields. But before we came to this
concrete denouement, a lot of great minds devoted themselves.
The Maxwellian Milestone as they call it began way way back to
1785 as Charles-Augustin de Coulomb reports about how the force
between two charges varies with the inverse square of their
distance, and then Alessandro Volta on 1800 invented the battery
which made way for experiments to be done under constant direct
current, next came Hans Christian Orsted in 1820 who provided
the first evidence link between electricity and magnetism. Also,
Andre Marie Ampere showed that two parallel current-carrying
wires could be made to exhibit a mutual attraction or repulsion
depending on the relative direction of currents. Lastly, Michael
Faraday by the early 1830s showed that just as electricity could
influence the behavior of a magnet, a magnet could affect
electricity by showing that a magnet through a loop of wire
could produce current.

Faraday made a big impact on Maxwell as he is incapable to

prove the relationship between electricity and magnetism
mathematically; this is where he came in. Maxwell’s first
attempt on 1855 where he made a paper called “On Faraday’s Lines
of Force”, he devised a model by analogy which faced turmoil
distractions. He began his job and invoked himself into studying
the Rings of Saturn and he got ill where he nearly died because
of smallpox. But this didn’t stop him from smoothing out
Faraday’s theory. He then envisioned a molecular medium in which
magnetic fields are arrays of spinning vortices. With this
Maxwell realized that this mechanical vision helped describe a
range of electromagnetic phenomena. This where the grounds for
displacement current took place, imposing that how the change in
electric field passing through a particular area can give rise
to a magnetic field just like current. Maxwell stated that
it can exist in any medium including that of vacuum, which is
purely empty and where no electrons exist. Also, he gave
concepts to what we so call today as permittivity and
permeability which are the constants that expresses how fast
electromagnetic wave travels in free space. With this he was
able to estimate the speed of an electromagnetic wave in free
space. He then concluded that this value compared to its near
equality to the speed of light, light must be an electromagnetic
wave. He later on left this model but continued with
displacement current. He focused on mathematics and how can
electricity and magnetism are linked and how they can move
together to form an electromagnetic wave.

This is the groundwork of the physicist and engineers which

leads the way on how we understand electromagnetics today. Of
course, people were still against and believe that Maxwell’s
theory lacks evidence. One of them was Sir William Thomson who
objected that it quite hard to imagine forming anything out of
the nothingness of a vacuum. As well as his theory of
oscillating electric and magnetic field which has no solid
grounds wherein he didn’t state on how they move through space.
Just like any other physicist, he also believed in the concept
of medium. And in 1865 he presented his equations without any
mechanical model to prove how or why electromagnetic waves could
possibly propagate. But many still sees this as deficient.

As student studying Advanced Electromagnetism it is

genuinely hard to understand concepts of the unseen. But James
Maxwell has to prove himself to a lot of people wherein during
his time mathematics isn’t fully developed or hasn’t matured
yet. The four Maxwell’s equation that we have been discerning
today was originally of twenty equations with twenty variables.
Due to this nobody paid attention to his works except for one
named Oliver Heaviside. He was determined to study Maxwell’s
theory and have successfully put Maxwell’s equations in to its
forms today. Also, George Francis FitzGerald and Oliver Lodge
helped with the advancement of the theoretical understanding of
Maxwell’s theory. Lodge deduced the action of electromagnetic
wave in resonance through his experiments on lightning
protection when he noticed that discharging capacitors through
wires produced arcs then came Heinrich Hertz who used sparks in
loops to detect unseen radio-frequency waves.

Many have worked together to prove Maxwell’s theory and as

the title implies it is indeed a long road to come to the
advancement of science and technology today. It is a mere
collection of intrusiveness reciprocated with perseverance that
we came to a conclusion and how we could further involve
ourselves into contributing on what is already existing.

“Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science.”

― James Clerk Maxwell