william gilbert was the first person who made a careful study of electricity and magnetism.
william gilbert was the first person who made a careful study of electricity and magnetism.
who was the first person who made a careful study of electricity and magnetism?
william gilbert
ancient cultures around the mediterranean knew that certain objects, such as rods of amber, could be rubbed with cat's fur to attract light objects like feathers and papers. thales of miletus made a series of observations on static electricity around 600 bc, from which he believed that friction rendered amber magnetic, in contrast to minerals such as magnetite, which needed no rubbing. thales was incorrect in believing the attraction was due to a magnetic effect, but later science would prove a link between magnetism and electricity. electricity would remain little more than an intellectual curiosity for millennia until 1600, when the english scientist william gilbert made a careful study of electricity and magnetism, distinguishing the lodestone effect from static electricity produced by rubbing amber. he coined the new latin word "electricus" ("of amber" or "like amber", from ["elektron"], the greek word for "amber") to refer to the property of attracting small objects after being rubbed. this association gave rise to the english words "electric" and "electricity", which made their first appearance in print in thomas browne's "pseudodoxia epidemica" of 1646.
coulomb's law
as a consequence of einstein's theory of special relativity, electricity and magnetism are fundamentally interlinked. both magnetism lacking electricity, and electricity without magnetism, are inconsistent with special relativity, due to such effects as length contraction, time dilation, and the fact that the magnetic force is velocity-dependent. however, when both electricity and magnetism are taken into account, the resulting theory (electromagnetism) is fully consistent with special relativity. in particular, a phenomenon that appears purely electric or purely magnetic to one observer may be a mix of both to another, or more generally the relative contributions of electricity and magnetism are dependent on the frame of reference. thus, special relativity "mixes" electricity and magnetism into a single, inseparable phenomenon called electromagnetism, analogous to how relativity "mixes" space and time into spacetime.
magnetism