Talk:Introduction to electromagnetism

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 6 September 2018 and 11 December 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Qbrodsky.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 23:08, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Peer Review
I like the lead. It clearly states the intent of the topic. It is brief enough to not become redundant, but complete enough to give a good understanding of the topic material. It reflects the important concepts that are/will be contained in the rest of the article. You could potentially indicate that there will be a section about circuits.

The article is well balanced and covers the relevant topics. There is not one section that dominates the rest. I think that this article will expand out to be very well organized. The current headings are logical separations between subjects. It will be relatively easy for this article to be neutral due to the technical nature of its focus. The pictures included are very relevant and informing. The visualization of electromagnetic fields is a great way to make this article accessible to all readers.

The current "potential sources" section has a lot of great sources for use later in the article. All of them appear to be reliable.

Your article is very well organized. It has plenty of source material that will help develop this page. Although electromagnetism can be very complicated. As of now, the written sections do well to stick to the title of introductory. They are informational enough to give the reader a good understanding of the subject, without overcomplicating the fundamental topics. The the bulleted "to-be written" preview for each section is a good way to give an introductory sentence or two about the section.

In terms of edits, I think that at the current position, the article covers all the bases. Some of the underlined portions do need some editing, but you clearly recognize that. One specific place I notice underlined is the list about Gauss' law. I think that because of the introductory nature of this article, simply linking the page to Guass' law is sufficient. Similarly, the underlined portions about line integrals and circuit schematics could just be linked to. This would let you get your point across while giving the reader the option to research deeper. Additionally, it may be useful to add a short section describing the units of electromagnetism. I am sure that there are articles for each, but a simple explanation or link of how electromagnetic fields are measured may be helpful to the reader. This could fall under the circuits section. It may be a challenge to simplify the electromagnetic waves section, but I do believe it needs a stand alone section.

"although in that publication he called them "lines of magnetic and electric force" could go to (called "lines of magnetic and electric force" in this publication.)

The most important thing to improve your contribution is to continue to write. This article has an excellent base for expansion upon. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kadebose (talk • contribs) 10:38, 23 October 2018 (UTC)


 * As already mentioned here, I dispute the encyclopedic value of this article. As for the above Peer review, I'd like to make explicit that the above reviewing editor is a peer within the same project  MIT/Science Writing for the Public (Fall_2018) to the editor, who moved this to the article space. Purgy (talk) 10:00, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Contested deletion
This article should not be speedy deleted as being recently created, having no relevant page history and duplicating an existing English Wikipedia topic, because it would be better served by, e.g., transferring over to Wikibooks. It's just an introductory exposition of standard material &mdash; it's not hurting anything to have it here for a while until we figure out the best thing to do with it. There's no reason to erase the work that went into it. Moreover, we do have articles like Introduction to quantum mechanics, Introduction to general relativity, Introduction to the mathematics of general relativity, Introduction to evolution, etc., so an article of this type would fit in a good tradition. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 14:30, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I mean, we have an Introduction to M-theory, when M-theory has neither experimental support nor a complete mathematical formulation. ("The meaning of the M will be decided when the theory is understood," as the common quip has it.) Why shouldn't we have an introductory article for a standard part of the high-school and college curriculum? XOR&#39;easter (talk) 15:02, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree with what you say about introductory articles, but our electromagnetism article is an introductory article. It's not maths heavy and covers all the main aspects.  I've never liked this article – it's unclear and something of a coatrack.  I've had a shot at rewriting the lead, but even after that, it doesn't seem to be doing anything for us that electromagnetism isn't already doing better. SpinningSpark 13:23, 5 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Slightly late to the conversation, but I offer this observation: this should be the primary encyclopedia article (not an "introduction"), and the existing article should be retitled "Electromagnetism (advanced)", or "Advanced electromagnetism". This article is exactly what an entry should be in a general interest encyclopedia. The primary one is not written for a general audience; it is written as a display of the editors' advanced knowledge and expertise and shows little regard for the interests of the general public. I suggest it is by and for an elitist cadre of writers. DonFB (talk) 03:03, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm going to withdraw and apologize for the comment I just made above. In my zeal, I did not realize that the hatnote links to "Electromagnetic field", which is considerably more technical than the "Electromagnetism" article. I maintain, however, that many articles on technical and mathematical subjects need much more reader-friendly introductions (lede sections) than they now have. DonFB (talk) 03:44, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Is this really an introductory article?
The opening sentence currently reads,


 * "Electric charge is a quantity used to determine how a particle will behave in an electric field. There are three possible "types" of charge: positive, negative, and neutral. However, the distinction between positive and negative is by convention only."

If we can't state it any simpler than that, then there doesn't seem to be any point in having this article. Electromagnetism actually does it better. SpinningSpark 18:02, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

The article should couple the mathematical concepts with people's intuitive understanding of electricity
As it stands, there doesn't seem to be any point at which the article connects up the mathematical notions, such as electric fields, flux, and potential energy, with the 'intuitive' idea that people have about electricity. In fact, there's a section titled 'Electricity' which never mentions the word 'electricity'. I suggest that the article place more emphasis on this connection. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:638:501:A150:158C:575F:2890:7A64 (talk) 14:32, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree. I rewrote much of this article in an attempt to make it more coherent and readable but I feel that it remains (in places at least) quite abstract, mathematical and disconnected from immediately understandable implications. Hopefully it can be further developed to be better at giving a conceptual understanding (rather than merely a conceptual overview) by connecting content in each section to the physical meaning or manifestation of the theory. Personally, I think this provides the best avenue for progressing the quality of the article at the moment. Alduin2000 (talk) 17:08, 28 April 2021 (UTC)