Electricity and Magnetism Kingsborough （电和磁金世葆）.pdf

Electricity and Magnetism Definition The Physical phenomena involving electric charges, their motions, and their effects. The motion of a charge is affected by its interaction with the electric field and, for a moving charge, the magnetic field. The electric field acting on a charge arises from the presence of other charges and from a time-varying magnetic field. The magnetic field acting on a moving charge arises from the motion of other charges and from a time-varying electric field. Thus electricity and magnetism are ultimately inextricably linked. In many cases, however, one aspect may dominate, and the separation is meaningful. See also Electric charge; Electric field; Magnetism. History of Electricity From the writings of Thales of Miletus it appears that Westerners knew as long ago as 600 B.C. that amber becomes charged by rubbing. There was little real progress until the English scientist William Gilbert in 1600 described the electrification of many substances and coined the term electricity from the Greek word for amber. As a result, Gilbert is called the father of modern electricity. In 1660 Otto von Guericke invented a crude machine for producing static electricity. It was a ball of sulfur, rotated by a crank with one hand and rubbed with the other. Successors, such as Francis Hauksbee, made improvements that provided experimenters with a ready source of static electricity. Todays highly developed descendant of these early machines is the Van de Graaf generator, which is sometimes used as a particle accelerator. Robert Boyle realized that attraction and repulsion were mutual and that electric force was transmitted through a vacuum (c.1675). Stephen Gray distinguished between conductors and nonconductors (1729). C. F. Du Fay recognized two kinds of electricity, which Benjamin Franklin and Ebenezer Kinnersley of Philadelphia later named positive and negative. The quantitative development of electricity began late in the eighteenth c