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Looking back in time, I
find my progress in developing electromagnetic theory has taken many
decades. I have done much work and gathered many insights, but some of the
synthesis is only now coming to me.
Along with everyone else,
I have been guilty of ignoring the magnetic field and concentrating too
much on the electric field, and on voltage. We are encouraged to do this
because we can measure voltage much more easily than we can measure
magnetic field. Take Faraday’s law, the starting point for all of today’s
theory. http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/images/7877.jpg
Faraday did not deliver
electric current into the primary of his transformer, and this did not
create magnetic field. Rather, he delivered electromagnetic field, which
has a magnetic dimension as well as its electric dimension. It approached
his transformer at the speed of light, and then reciprocated from side to
side of the primary coil at the speed of light. (See animations , Figures 4 and 5 of "Displacement
Current" , and Figure 3 . At every
stage, it was magnetic field just as much as it was electric field. Or we
could say that it was electric field just as much as it was magnetic field.
What entered the secondary of the transformer was both magnetic and
electric, and what left the secondary and advanced towards the voltage
meter was magnetic as well as electric.
However, Mike Gibson fell
into the same trap when he discussed the
one turn transformer (2)
, the “prototype” for Faraday’s experiment when he supposedly discovered electromagnetic
induction . Like me, Mike did not mention the magnetic field, which
obviously exists just as much as the electric field.
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