Understanding physics means not remembering facts, but “how do we know?” those facts. It means, not citing obtuse concepts, but “what do they mean, and how were scientists driven to introduce them?
Enough sermon. The concept in this case is “FIELD” I have written a number of web sites where, I hope, anyone with good reading ability and enough curiosity can get a conceptual understanding. They stress astronomy and space, but a lot of physics is there too. The term “field” grew gradually in the 18th century, and here is how I present it to the user. First, as noted in http://www.phy6.org/Education/whfldlns.html came Faraday’s idea of magnetic field lines (his term was “lines of force”). They are no more tangible than lines of latitude and longitude, but to Faraday, it seemed that space with field lines was somehow not empty. Then came Maxwell (following section there) who used the magnetic end electric vectors, abstract quantities representing electric and magnetic forces which could exist at some point, if any electric charge happened to be there. (If no such charges existed, the point was just empty space.) Maxwell showed that these insubstantial quantities could transmit an elec
Related Questions
- Understanding physics means not remembering facts, but "how do we know?" those facts. It means, not citing obtuse concepts, but "what do they mean, and how were scientists driven to introduce them?
- I think its mean that some questions go unanswered. If helping other people and giving our opinons means so much, why are there so many unanswered?
- What does this [C-reactive protein] study mean for understanding, treating, and preventing heart disease?
