Faraday, Michael, 1791-1867; Physicists -- Great Britain -- Biography
Is this effect an attraction and a repulsion at a distance? If so, why
should both cease when the wire ceases to move? In fact, the deportment
of the wire resembles far more that of a body moving in a resisting
medium than anything else; the resistance ceasing when the motion is
suspended. Let us imagine the case of a liquid so mobile that the hand
may be passed through it to and fro, without encountering any sensible
resistance. It resembles the motion of a conductor in the unexcited
field of an electro-magnet. Now, let us suppose a body placed in
the liquid, or acting on it, which confers upon it the property of
viscosity; the hand would no longer move freely. During its motion, but
then only, resistance would be encountered and overcome. Here we have
rudely represented the case of the excited magnetic field, and the
result in both cases would be substantially the same. In both cases heat
would, in the end, be generated outside of the muscle, its amount being
exactly equivalent to the resistance overcome.
Let us push the analogy a little further; suppose in the case of the
fluid rendered viscous, as assumed a moment ago, the viscosity not to be
so great as to prevent the formation of ripples when the hand is passed
through the liquid. Then the motion of the hand, before its final
conversion into heat, would exist for a time as wave-motion, which, on
subsiding, would generate its due equivalent of heat. This intermediate
stage, in the case of our moving wire, is represented by the period
during which the electric current is flowing through it; but that
current, like the ripples of our liquid, soon subsides, being, like
them, converted into heat.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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