Little Masterpieces of Science: Invention and Discovery — John Shaqi
Little Masterpieces of Science: Invention and Discovery
History
Little Masterpieces of Science: Invention and Discovery
Inventions
Introducing the edge of his disk between the poles of the large
horseshoe magnet of the Royal Society, and connecting the axis and the
edge of the disk, each by a wire with a galvanometer, he obtained, when
the disk was turned round, a constant flow of electricity. The direction
of the current was determined by the direction of the motion, the
current being reversed when the rotation was reversed. He now states the
law which rules the production of currents in both disks and wires, and
in so doing uses, for the first time, a phrase which has since become
famous. When iron filings are scattered over a magnet, the particles of
iron arrange themselves in certain determined lines called magnetic
curves. In 1831, Faraday for the first time called these curves "lines
of magnetic force;" and he showed that to produce induced currents
neither approach to nor withdrawal from a magnetic source, or centre, or
pole, was essential, but that it was only necessary to cut appropriately
the lines of magnetic force. Faraday's first paper on Magneto-electric
Induction, which I have here endeavoured to condense, was read before
the Royal Society on the 24th of November, 1831.
On January 12, 1832, he communicated to the Royal Society a second paper
on "Terrestrial Magneto-electric Induction," which was chosen as the
Bakerian Lecture for the year. He placed a bar of iron in a coil of
wire, and lifting the bar into the direction of the dipping needle, he
excited by this action a current in the coil. On reversing the bar, a
current in the opposite direction rushed through the wire. The same
effect was produced, when, on holding the helix in the line of dip, a
bar of iron was thrust into it. Here, however, the earth acted on the
coil through the intermediation of the bar of iron. He abandoned the bar
and simply set a copper-plate spinning in a horizontal plane; he knew
that the earth's lines of magnetic force then crossed the plate at an
angle of about 70 deg.. When the plate spun round, the lines of force were
intersected and induced currents generated, which produced their proper
effect when carried from the plate to the galvanometer. "When the plate
was in the magnetic meridian, or in any other plane coinciding with the
magnetic dip, then its rotation produced no effect upon the
galvanometer."
At the suggestion of a mind fruitful in suggestions of a profound and
philosophic character--I mean that of Sir John Herschel--Mr. Barlow, of
Woolwich, had experimented with a rotating iron shell. Mr. Christie had
also performed an elaborate series of experiments on a rotating iron
disk. Both of them had found that when in rotation the body exercised a
peculiar action upon the magnetic needle, deflecting it in a manner
which was not observed during quiescence; but neither of them was aware
at the time of the agent which produced this extraordinary deflection.
They ascribed it to some change in the magnetism of the iron shell and
disk.
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