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The (Shocking) History & Physics of Electric Transformers
History of electric transformers from Faraday through Lenz, Sturgeon, Callan, Ruhmkorff, Gaulard, Westinghouse and more (with a description of what Tesla did and didn’t do in the evolution of electricity). Hello, my name is Kathy Joseph and I have done a lot of original research from 1800s papers, magazines, patents, and books to tell you…
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( ∈ vs. ε): Why Physicists Use 2 Forms of the Greek Letter Epsilon
When I learned Maxwell’s equations in college, I was taught to draw the permittivity with a Greek letter epsilon that looked like a c with a line in it and not like a backwards 3 like usual. Table Of Contents Why Physicists Use 2 Forms of the Greek Letter Epsilon Image References Reference Why Physicists…
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Faraday Cage and Ice Pail Experiment Explained
Before I get into the nitty grities of the physics of the Faraday cage and the ice bucket experiment, I would like to start with a simple demonstration of the cage that I did with things around the house that I think is pretty amazing. Table Of Contents Simple At-Home Faraday Cage Experiment History of…
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Faraday Cage History: A Deep Dive
On February 22, 2022, I got to climb into something called the “cave of doom” and then stand there as it was hit by huge lightning bolts from a giant Tesla coil. The reason I said that: “I trust Physics… and Faraday” is because I was safe because the “cave of doom” was actually a…
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The Origin of The Polyphase Current
As I said in my video on the history of 3-phase electricity, both Nikola Tesla and Galileo Ferraris simultaneously discovered 2-phase electricity and the 2-phase motor that were, according to Tesla, “identical almost to the smallest detail.”[1] So, how did these two men come up with this amazing discovery? That is what this supplemental video…
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Magnetic Fields, Electric Fields, and Elector Magnetic Waves: Physics And History
I was working on a video on the physics of the Faraday cage and it became clear that not only do you need to talk about magnetic fields to explain the cage but that Faraday had actually created the idea of electric fields for that very purpose in 1837. Now I had known that Faraday…
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How Niels Bohr Mathematically Derived His Model
I just made a video about the personal history of Niels Bohr and how he made his model and when I was done, I was asked to make a video showing mathematically in detail how Bohr derived the position, energy, and, most importantly, the frequency of light created for an electron in an atom. So…
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Max Planck Biography with Depth & Humor
Max Planck was notoriously unphotogenic. I mean just look at him, as a viewer said he looks like he had his humor surgically removed. But according to the people that knew him, Planck was actually a lovely person full of humor, energy and kindness. As Albert Einstein put it in 1918, “living next to Planck…
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First Law of Thermodynamics: History of the Concept of Energy
The first law of thermodynamics is basically as follows: there are different types of energy, the energy of motion, the energy in a compressed spring, the energy of a rock lifted off the ground, the energy of heat, nuclear energy, etcetera. Table Of Contents Emilie du Chatelet Emilie and Voltaire Newton’s Book Emilie du Chatelet’s…
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How X-rays Were Discovered by Wilhelm Roentgen
On November 8th of 1895, a shy and diligent scientist named Wilhelm Roentgen saw a flicker on a fluorescent screen and changed our world with his discovery of what he called (and we still call) “x-rays”. But who was Roentgen, how did a dirty picture almost derail his life, and why did he discover x-rays?…