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leblon1. Target audience: teenagers.
2. Form: history of electricity and magnetism from ancient times to early 20th century. No quantum stuff.
3. Content: I wanted to cover both the scientific developments and the most important technological applications. So that towards the end the reader appreciates where the electricity comes from when one plugs in an electric device and how much effort went into developing all this technology.
4. No math, but I wanted the book to function as a sort of stealth textbook. That is, telling a story is just a cover for explaining some physical concepts.Compared to the well-known series of books by Landau-Kitaigorodsky, it has less physics and much more history and anecdotes. But it still teaches stuff, instead of just telling "this guy discovered something exciting, but I am not going to tell you what, exactly".
5. I also wanted to convey some idea how scientists think and work. Not just "Faraday built the first electric motor", but "Faraday had this and this physical idea, and this enabled him to construct an electric motor". Not "Faraday built the first dynamo", but "Faraday has the idea that current is generated when magnetic lines of force are being cut by a conductor. So he built this machine to generate electric current, but attached the leads in the wrong place, because he had the wrong idea about how the current will flow." Also, show the role of both theoretical ideas and experimental tricks.
6. Most chapters will be accompanied with descriptions of a few simple experiments to do at home.
Here is a list of sources I used so far:
Willliam Gilbert, “On the magnet, magnetic bodies, and the great magnet Earth”.
J. L. Heilbron, “Electricity in the 17th and 18th centuries.” University of California Press, 1979.
Benjamin Franklin, “The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin”.
Henry Cavendish, “Electrical Researches of Henry Cavendish,” ed. James Clerk Maxwell. Cambridge University Press, 1879.
A. K. T. Assis and J. P. M. C. Chaib, “Ampere’s Electrodynamics,” 2015.
Georg Simon Ohm, “Electric circuit investigated mathematically”.
F. Mann, “Georg Simon Ohm.” Amp Books, 2007.
A. W. Hirschfeld, “The electric life of Michael Faraday.” Walker Books, 2006.
S. P. Thompson, “Michael Faraday: his life and work.” Cassel and co., 1901.
L. P. Williams, “Michael Faraday: a biography.” Basic Books, 1964.
P. Harman (ed.) "The scientific letters and papers of James Clerk Maxwell." Cambridge University Press, 1990.
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(no subject)
Date: 2019-12-25 08:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-12-26 02:23 am (UTC)it could be interesting to share at least some stories about telegraph,
first transatlantic cables. Oliver Heaviside, Mihajlo Pupin, etc
Pupin proposed the loading coil, there is now "Pupin Hall" on Columbia campus
(no subject)
Date: 2019-12-26 04:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-12-29 01:50 am (UTC)