Talk:History of Maxwell's equations

Relativity
ref "...Albert Einstein dismissed the notion of the aether as an unnecessary one."

This is wrong. Einstein dismissed only the specific Luminiferous aether falsified by MM. Furthermore Einstein proposed that the path to unifying EM and GR was with a "New Aether".

http://www.zionism-israel.com/Albert_Einstein/Albert_Einstein_Ether_Relativity.htm

Split from Maxwell's equations
I didn't write any of this content - the Maxwell's equation article became so long, including (surprise surprise) the history section that a number of editors (including myself) decided the history section could make its own article. I did so to see how it would turn out. The idea was proposed by user:Fgnievinski and others here. If there is a strong consensus to merge it back we can always revert the changes and redirect this article back to Maxwell's equations.

For reference here is the very first edit summary:

split History from Maxwell's equations - see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics and talk:Maxwell's equations

M&and;Ŝc2ħεИτlk 07:53, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Ordered list
"On Physical Lines of Force" should include an ordered list, but for some reason, each item is labeled "1." 172.56.27.150 (talk) 17:46, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Circuital
The expression "Ampere's Circuital Law" leaves something to be desired. It seems to imply that Ampere found a round-about way of expressing an idea. (Also, the pronunciation of "circuital" isn't reminiscent of "circuit".) Could the word "circuit" be substituted for "circuital" (despite its application as an adjective, rather than a noun), since circuital manners of speech are decidedly yucky? I'm not familiar with the law nor its application, but I presume it has more to do with circuits than with how Ampere used circumlocution to get his idea across. 208.54.85.203 (talk) 18:09, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Symbols
I'd like to see the mu, epsilon, and bold-faced B and H identified. 172.56.26.177 (talk) 18:51, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Opening sentence
It wasn't until I moved my cursor to "fundamental" and "fields" that I discovered that these words were being used in special ways. I'd assumed that "fundamental fields" was equivalent to "basic branches", but seeing the titles of the articles to which they were linked made me realize that I didn't understand the sentence at all.

"In electromagnetism, one of the fundamental fields of physics..."

It never occurred to me that fundamental had anything to do with "interaction", or that electromagnetism was a "field". Nor do I consider these facts important to bear in mind when approaching this article from the outset. I'd like to see it start out on a footing which doesn't expect such sophistication on the part of the reader, but introduces concepts in a manner closer to the way physics itself evolved historically. We can take for granted that everybody knows that electricity and magnetism exist, and are interrelated somehow, and that "electromagnetism" refers to that relationship, but that, I think, ought to be the limit of our assumptions about readers who might take an interest in this subject, most of whom might be interested in history, but aren't well versed in physics. 172.56.27.234 (talk) 19:22, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Pronunciation of Maxwell's middle name
I wonder whether Maxwell pronounced his middle name "clark". 208.54.85.226 (talk) 19:41, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Clerk (pronounced clark) is not a middle name. Instead it is the first part of a double-banger family name, Clerk Maxwell, added IIR, due to some family connection by James' father. I suppose it is OK to leave Clerk off for brevity's sake, especially since it was a relatively recent addition. The answer to your questions is easy to find at the website run by the JCM museum in Edinburgh (please Google it yourself...that's what Google is for) ;-) ajr--75.148.94.222 (talk) 05:26, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

What "twenty equations"?
in the section The Term Maxwell's Equations this appears:

But it wasn't until 1884 that Oliver Heaviside, concurrently with similar work by Josiah Willard Gibbs and Heinrich Hertz, grouped the twenty equations together into a set of only four

There is no previous reference to twenty equations, leaving this confusing at best. Someone who understands the subject better than I do should correct this. Dismalscholar (talk) 17:57, 18 September 2021 (UTC)


 * No correction needed, and why confusing? Maxwell's 20 equations is really the topic of the whole entry. Perhaps must add a source to the refs.  In his Treatise, "Maxwell's Equations" numbered not four, but twenty, in Quaternion form, based on potentials.  In his earlier papers, Maxwell himself refers to the set of twenty equations.  Really there were eight: two, plus six triples for the XYZ coords.  (Hmm, this article doesn't mention Quaternions.  That does need correction.)  Essentially that's why the physics community at the time rejected them: besides rejecting the "fields" concept, also they couldn't easily interpret the odd math. The Quaternions weren't necessary, and Maxwell most probably used them because they were a huge fad at the time, having just been invented by Hamilton.  Acceptance of Maxwell then required thirty years of debate and fighting (see The Maxwellians book,) much settled when Heaviside reduced the twenty to only four (with them now based on vectors, not Potentials.) 97.113.223.163 (talk) 17:41, 14 May 2023 (UTC)