History of Physics - Advances in Electricity, Magnetism, and Thermodynamics

Advances in Electricity, Magnetism, and Thermodynamics

In 1800, Alessandro Volta invented the electric battery and thus improved the way electric currents could also be studied. A year later, Thomas Young demonstrated the wave nature of light - which received strong experimental support from the work of Augustin-Jean Fresnel - and the principle of interference. In 1820, Hans Christian Ørsted found that a current-carrying conductor gives rise to a magnetic force surrounding it, and within a week after Ørsted's discovery reached France, André-Marie Ampère discovered that two parallel electric currents will exert forces on each other. 1821, Michael Faraday built an electricity-powered motor, while Georg Ohm stated his law of electrical resistance in 1826, expressing the relationship between voltage, current, and resistance in an electric circuit. A year later, botanist Robert Brown discovered Brownian motion: pollen grains in water undergoing movement resulting from their bombardment by the fast-moving atoms or molecules in the liquid. In 1831 Faraday (and independently Joseph Henry) discovered the reverse effect, the production of an electric potential or current through magnetism - known as electromagnetic induction; these two discoveries are the basis of the electric motor and the electric generator, respectively.