What is … Maxwell's equations?

This page hosts information on Marek Gluza's talk "What are … Maxwell's equations?" at the "What is …?" seminar. This talk may help you better understand the talk by Marlis Hochbruck.

Where & When

• Friday, January 19, 2018, 1.00pm @ Urania BMS Loft

Abstract

The talk is an invitation to Maxwell's equations, a set of four partial differential equations that describe the classical electromagnetic phenomena. In physics, they were a milestone with huge impact and influence on subsequent physics such as the theory of special relativity and the quantum gauge field theories, like the Standard Model of particle physics. In engineering, the numerical solution to Maxwell's equations allows important technical advances, such as the improvement of the building blocks of electronic devices and our communication channels (which allows us to watch cats over Internet in always better quality).

In this talk, I will introduce electromagnetic fields in the Euclidean space and the Maxwell's equations governing them, explain their physical meaning and show how one can derive that the light is an electromagnetic wave from Maxwell's equations. So wonder no more about the fundamental laws making it all possible, let's see together what are the Maxwell's equations!