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We live in a world of things that move. But we don’t always know what this means. ‘Electromagnetism’ is the study of how the simple motion of charged particles is behind every electrical and magnetic phenomenon known to mankind, even light itself. It is the first attempt at a ‘theory of everything’, the beginning of all modern physics and one of the greatest discoveries in history. In every walk of physics, the scientist thinks: “if only we understood this like electromagnetism”.
Practically, this module is then concerned with the building blocks of electrical and magnetic things. Starting from first principles, we consider all of the things that you expect to find in a textbook’s table of contents: the electric field, potential, Coulomb’s law, Gauss’s law, currents, the magnetic field, the Lorentz force, Faraday’s law, or Lenz’s law. All of this though, is just an introduction. These are all just shadows of the single great idea, that all of these things are really one thing: electromagnetic waves, whose Sunday name is light.
More practically still, if this still doesn’t interest you, then you can consider that Electromagnetism is not just a fundamental curiosity but a key part of how to get into an elite university. For interviews at high-ranking universities, like Cambridge and Oxford, interview questions in Physics/NaturalSciences and Engineering are frequently drawn from mechanics and electromagnetism.
Module leader: Clark Thomas
