James Clerk Maxwell’s Column Toy

A Good Way to Teach Maxwell’s Equations for Electromagnetism

Robert Thibadeau
LieCatcher
Published in
5 min readApr 24, 2024

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Showing magnetic fields with iron filings is a poor way to see Maxwell’s field effects in his equations, but this toy really shows the essence of the equations in action.

The reason is that his equations are all about forces and actions in the electromagnetic fields that are…

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Robert Thibadeau
LieCatcher

Carnegie Mellon University since 1979 — Cognitive Science, AI, Machine Learning, one of the founding Directors of the Robotics Institute. rht@brightplaza.com