Way back in the day, a man named James Clerk Maxwell said that math is the glue that unites electricity and magnetism. And that's about it. That's how it got here.…You didn't believe us, did you?...

James Clerk MaxwellBorn and Died: 1831 - 1879Country: Scottish-born British citizenScientific Field(s): Mathematical PhysicistShort Bio: Even when he was a child, people knew Maxwell would go far,...

Cell phones, light bulbs, and microwaves all use radiation to work. We aren't talking about radioactive energy, which shouldn't be anywhere near our Hot Pockets thank you very much. We're actually...

Shmoop loves pointing things out, whether they'relogical fallacies.historical landmarks.historical fallacies about landmarks.logical history about fallacies.Some points are more useful than others,...

You might have noticed, but vectors only come in one type: straight lines. That's never going to change, but you can show more complex movement by making a vector field. To make a vector field, yo...

Way way back many centuries ago, around 400 BC, philosophers started arguing about light. Did it have a finite speed, or was it variable like most things? This was back when science was first being...

Have you ever made sounds by rubbing the rim of a glass of water? Moving your finger around the rim physically creates vibrations that you'll hear as sound.Sometimes it sounds great, and sometimes...

Electricity powers everything from the blender in your kitchen to the phone in your pocket to the website you visit to find out if your cell phone would blend. Electricity's great as long as you do...

People say lots of things—usually clichés—and one of those things is that opposites attract. We aren't sure how accurate that is about people, but it's totally true for point charges. A point...

Gauss's Law is all about the plight of an electric charge. That spark that you get when you touch a metal doorknob after you slide your feet through carpet is a force, along with the magnetism that...

It's hard to imagine what the world would be like without a North or South Pole. Even if we don't think about what would happen to the poor penguins in Antarctica, Santa Claus wouldn't know where t...

It's easy to forget that a piece of technology—like a computer or a Tamagotchi—is more than just a black box, giving us an answer whenever we need it to. But the minute that we accidentally go...