Maxwell: Electricity, magnetism and light - S. L. Glashow

Compare electricity and magnetism through Gilbert's observations: two kinds of electricity, two poles of magnets, and how friction, compasses, and earth magnetism reveal their similarities and differences.

Trace the shift from two kinds of electricity to a single electrical fluid, revealing positive and negative electricity through friction experiments and Franklin's kite observations.

Follow how Priestley and Coulomb reveal inverse square laws, linking gravity and electrostatics to forces dependent on the product of charges and distance squared, with attraction or repulsion.

Trace the Galvani and Volta debate that spurred the invention of the battery, linking animal electricity experiments to the first static electrical generator and modern power sources.

Trace Galvani's animal electricity experiments on frog nerves and muscles, including dramatic demonstrations by his nephew, which inspired public wonder and the Frankenstein myth in science and literature.

Alessandro Volta challenged Galvani's view of animal electricity, showing two different metals can create current. He built a battery with copper, zinc, and wet paper, earning Napoleon's support.

Trace how Galvani and Volta shaped language and devices, from the galvanometer and galvanization to the volt and voltaic pile, and how the electric battery spurred light and discovery.

Trace Ampere's life and his work on the interaction between magnetic currents and fields, founding electrodynamics and earning Maxwell's title the Newton of electricity.

Demonstrating that electric current through a wire makes compass needles move, a 1820 Copenhagen classroom reveals the link between electricity and magnetism and the birth of electromagnetism.

Trace the life and work of Michael Faraday, from chemist to electromagnetism pioneer, who discovered electromagnetic induction and proposed lines of force powering dynamos and motors.

The lecture explains how electricity can produce magnetism and how changing magnetism generates electricity, culminating in the discovery of the law of magnetic induction via Faraday's ring experiment.

Changing magnetism produces electricity, enabling factories and electric lights, and establishing the notion of electrical and magnetic fields at the heart of electromagnetism.

Trace the life of James Clerk Maxwell, from early curiosity and education to his groundbreaking electricity and magnetism work, including the four equations bearing his name.

Maxwell assembled these into differential equations, fixing charge conservation with a displacement current. He showed that electromagnetic waves travel at light speed, identifying light as an electromagnetic phenomenon, not particles.

Explore light as electromagnetic radiation across red to violet wavelengths and trace early experiments on light speed, culminating in Edison’s 1879 vacuum bulb that produced electric light.

Trace the evolving view of light from Galileo and Newton to Maxwell, linking refraction, the prism’s colors, and the emergence of radio waves in the electromagnetic spectrum.

Trace the emergence of radio waves from Hertz's lab under Maxwell's laws to Marconi's wireless telegraphy, enabling transatlantic communication and the electronic revolution.

Began the age of electricity and electronics, driven by Maxwell and Faraday, reshaping light, telephones, and mobile devices as electrons power currents and matter becomes electrical.

Highlight Glashow's journey from Cornell to Harvard, his electroweak unification work, extending quark models with a fourth quark, and earning the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics.