Electromagnetism Quotes

“The importance of C.F. Gauss for the development of modern physical theory and especially for the mathematical fundament of the theory of relativity is overwhelming indeed; also his achievement of the system of absolute measurement in the field of electromagnetism. In my opinion it is impossible to achieve a coherent objective picture of the world on the basis of concepts which are taken more or less from inner psychological experience.”
― Albert Einstein

“When listening to the lightning storms in your area on a standard AM radio, you will hear a sound like bacon frying and this is the electromagnetic energy that the storm is generating. Plants react to this energy and may show vigorous growth during lightning seasons.”
― Steven Magee, Electrical Forensics

“At one point in the story, following a brazen daytime bank robbery, Electro is shown escaping from the authorities by climbing up the side of a building, as easily as Spider-Man . . . we see one observer exclaim, "Look!! That strangely-garbed man is racing up the side of the building!" A second man on the street picks up the narrative: "He's holding on to the iron beams in the building by means of electric rays—using them like a magnet!! Incredible!"

There are three feelings inspired by this scene. The first is wonder as to why people rarely use the phrase "strangely-garbed" anymore. The second is nostalgia for the bygone era when pedestrians would routinely narrate events occurring in front of them, providing exposition for any casual bystander. And the third is pleasure at the realization that Electro's climbing this building is actually a physically plausible use of his powers.”
― James Kakalios, The Physics of Superheroes

“Light brings us the news of the Universe.”
― William Henry Bragg

“The velocity of light is one of the most important of the fundamental constants of Nature. Its measurement by Foucault and Fizeau gave as the result a speed greater in air than in water, thus deciding in favor of the undulatory and against the corpuscular theory. Again, the comparison of the electrostatic and the electromagnetic units gives as an experimental result a value remarkably close to the velocity of light–a result which justified Maxwell in concluding that light is the propagation of an electromagnetic disturbance. Finally, the principle of relativity gives the velocity of light a still greater importance, since one of its fundamental postulates is the constancy of this velocity under all possible conditions.”
― A.A. Michelson, Studies in Optics

“Stray voltage/current/frequency is the most serious form of exposure. Electrocution kills very few people per year. Stray voltage/current/frequency exposure is suspected to be making people sick in the millions!”
― Steven Magee, Electrical Forensics

“There were three people in my home and I was the only one showing Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity and reactivity to the radio frequency transmitting utility meters. For these reasons I did not shield my home and took the route of adapting my body to the toxic electromagnetic environment.”
― Steven Magee, Curing Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity

“The modern human lives in a cesspool of man-made electromagnetic radiation.”
― Steven Magee

“To prove to an indignant questioner on the spur of the moment that the work I do was useful seemed a thankless task and I gave it up. I turned to him with a smile and finished, 'To tell you the truth we don't do it because it is useful but because it's amusing.' The answer was thought of and given in a moment: it came from deep down in my mind, and the results were as admirable from my point of view as unexpected. My audience was clearly on my side. Prolonged and hearty applause greeted my confession. My questioner retired shaking his head over my wickedness and the newspapers next day, with obvious approval, came out with headlines 'Scientist Does It Because It's Amusing!' And if that is not the best reason why a scientist should do his work, I want to know what is. Would it be any good to ask a mother what practical use her baby is? That, as I say, was the first evening I ever spent in the United States and from that moment I felt at home. I realised that all talk about science purely for its practical and wealth-producing results is as idle in this country as in England. Practical results will follow right enough. No real knowledge is sterile. The most useless investigation may prove to have the most startling practical importance: Wireless telegraphy might not yet have come if Clerk Maxwell had been drawn away from his obviously 'useless' equations to do something of more practical importance. Large branches of chemistry would have remained obscure had Willard Gibbs not spent his time at mathematical calculations which only about two men of his generation could understand. With this trust in the ultimate usefulness of all real knowledge a man may proceed to devote himself to a study of first causes without apology, and without hope of immediate return.”
― A.V. Hill

“I was working with a Crookes tube covered by a shield of black cardboard. A piece of barium platino-cyanide paper lay on the bench there. I had been passing a current through the tube, and I noticed a peculiar black line across the paper. ...
The effect was one which could only be produced in ordinary parlance by the passage of light. No light could come from the tube because the shield which covered it was impervious to any light known even that of the electric arc. ...
I did not think I investigated. ...
I assumed that the effect must have come from the tube since its character indicated that it could come from nowhere else. ... It seemed at first a new kind of invisible light. It was clearly something new something unrecorded. ...
There is much to do, and I am busy, very busy.

[Describing to a journalist the discovery of X-rays that he had made on 8 Nov 1895.]”
― Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen

“If the hand be held between the discharge-tube and the screen, the darker shadow of the bones is seen within the slightly dark shadow-image of the hand itself... For brevity's sake I shall use the expression 'rays'; and to distinguish them from others of this name I shall call them 'X-rays'.”
― Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen

“There is a time and place for electromagnetic shielding and I regard it as a last resort due to the long term biological problems that I have observed with it over the years in plant growth experiments.”
― Steven Magee, Curing Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity

“I have never heard of an electromagnetically hypersensitive person recovering from the condition using shielding and Faraday cages, they just seem to become social lepers due to their increasing reactivity to the city environment and addicts to their shielded environment.”
― Steven Magee, Curing Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity

“With the development of utility electricity for the masses in the 1900's, very few people realize that a new era of sickness and disease was unleashed that are collectively called radiation sickness.”
― Steven Magee

“Faraday has the Cage, Tesla has the Coil and Magee has the Sandwich!”
― Steven Magee

“The human skin evolved in a natural electromagnetic radiation environment and is now in a very unnatural man-made one that is making many people sick.”
― Steven Magee, Electrical Forensics

“Mankind willfully changing the global electromagnetic radiation environment has created what I expect will become known as the man-made evolution era.”
― Steven Magee

“The leading research in the adverse human health effects of electromagnetic radiation is not being done by well funded governments or corporations, it is coming from a few self funded independent researchers.”
― Steven Magee

“The bridge between the electron and the other elementary particles is provided by the fine structure constant. ... An expanded form of the constant leads to equations that define the transformation of electromagnetic energy into electron mass/energy, ...”
― Malcolm H. Mac Gregor, The Enigmatic Electron: A Doorway to Particle Masses