In the first half of the nineteenth century England enjoyed the benefits of inventions that had fueled the Industrial Revolution. The steam produced by coal combustion set in motion the machinery that forever changed the methods of industrial production and drove railways and ships that expanded trade routes. The nights were lit by gas lamps and steel became the backbone of the cities. Technological innovations were changing lifestyle of human as radically as when our ancestors first domesticated plants and animals.
But electricity was little more than a circus attraction. People filled the rooms for rotating needles with magnets or admire the cloth that gave off sparks when rubbed against a glass without these phenomena have no practical application. The company worked with coal power and the strength of steel.
It was at this time that the Royal Society of London, a lab assistant, of humble origin and almost completely empirical in their training, he managed for the first time a needle is moving in circles to the current produced by a battery made with a series of plates of copper and zinc pass. This laborious experimentalist had discovered the principle of the electric motor and headed to become one of the most important physicists of history with names like Newton and Einstein. This man was Michael Faraday.
But Faraday does not pass the story by inventing the electric motor, which is the basis for the operation of washing machines, fans, escalators, hard drives, machines and trains today they are essential for millions of factories, businesses and homes. Nor was it enough that Faraday first described how the movement of a magnet can produce electricity, thus inventing the first electric generator. Faraday is one of the great physics because he discovered in an experiment, and with the help of patience and creativity unmatched, the magnetic force produced by passing a current changes the properties of light. He had discovered that electric and magnetic forces are present everywhere, although they are invisible to our eyes, and its nature is closely related to that of light.
The experiments of Faraday were admired by his contemporaries, but his ideas about the nature of electric and magnetic phenomena were not understood until James Clerk Maxwell described them in the form of the equations that now bear his name and that predict the existence of waves traveling at the speed of light. And it was not long before Heinrich put into practice the theory of Maxwell and first develop an experiment to produce and capture radio waves.
It is hard to imagine the world today without the ability we have developed to manipulate the phenomena of electromagnetism.
radio and television, cellular telephony, industrial processes, public lighting, medical treatments and countless applications that make modern life possible start with Faraday’s experiments. Today we live in a world deeply connected where our living standards are incredibly high thanks to the understanding of a phenomenon that apparently was oblivious to the course of technological progress of your time.
As for contemporary Faraday, today it is difficult for us to understand the scope of discovery of gravitational waves, last Wednesday were confirmed with two new events presented by scientists of the LIGO collaboration. Perhaps the magnitude and complexity of the experiment beyond our imagination and seem distant from the desk or laboratory Faraday, but, as at one time they were the electricity and magnetism, gravitational waves are a window to the future that will shape those willing to discover what goes beyond what is already written and imagined. So when you ask who cares about gravitational waves, we must think about the future, and the future is where we all want to live.
* Colombian Astrophysical.
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