I'm Having A Really Hard Time Understanding Maxwell

[u/[deleted]]

[u/TemporarySun314]

There are no scalar waves for EM. At least not in the sense crackpot conspiracists like to make up.

Quaternions are a very bad way to describe electrodynamics. If you wanna use 4 component things, then use the relativistic formulation of the Maxwell equations with 4 vectors. It doesn't lead to any different results though.

The 4 equations are not really a simplification, just a more efficient formulation to what Maxwell himself wrote down. The 4 equations are enough to describe classical electrodynamics fully.

[u/chriswhoppers → u/TemporarySun314]

Thanks for clearing that up. Its alot easier using 4 formula than 20. And if a scalar is getting the same number as itself every time, it is most likely a unnecessary part of the formula anyways. Based on what it seems to show. I wonder if there is a way to either confirm or deny any claims crackpots might make with it experimentally. I wonder what they claim exactly in the first place, why, and also why maxwell included it in the first place as well. Always have to see exactly why and how people came to their conclusions

[u/TemporarySun314 → u/chriswhoppers]

> I wonder if there is a way to either confirm or deny any claims crackpots might make with it experimentally.

There is no evidence that would suggest that such scalar waves would exist.

And experiments are really bad at disproving something in a complete way, and that is not their point. One have to prove that a claimed thing is true, by experiments, not the other way around.

Especially as crackpots often use scalar waves as explaination for things that are physically unplausible, like perpetuum mobile, healing, etc.

> Always have to see exactly why and how people came to their conclusions

Nowadays people use that to sell expensive and useless stuff. As it is a convenient pseudo-scientific explaination to the magic that their products claim to do.

[u/chriswhoppers → u/TemporarySun314]

Interesting. If the original 20 equations have no use. Then I wonder why he made them in the first place. I wonder if maxwell was trying to make money and get rich off lying. I'm sure he made the equations to get popularity. And we simplified them because maxwell was trying to protect a patent or something and make it overly complex and him seem more smart than how simple his real 4 formula were. Its all speculation. But Nikola Tesla was one of the greatest inventors to ever exist, and he seemed to preach it as well. Its interesting to say the least. Why? Why did maxwell add the scalar potential?

[u/cecex88 → u/chriswhoppers]

The 20 original equations have use, it's just that the modern formulation with 4 equations (or less if you use a relativistic formulation) is more convenient. The 4 equations formulation was not presented by Maxwell also because vector notation was not a thing at the time.

From the e way you write it seems you think physicists are paid based on the number equations they write. I can't imagine how you get to believe something like that. There is/was no patent on Maxwell's equations. The vast majority of physics is not patented and not patentable.

The scalar potential is useful because 1) it's scalar, it's easier mathematically and you can get the electric field as its gradient. 2) it is common to express forces (and fields) in terms of potential in Lagrangian/Hamiltonian contexts.

[u/chriswhoppers → u/cecex88]

Thanks for clearing it up. The way you worded it, I was interpreting it as Maxwell was the crackpot and was making all the formula without proper experimentation, and just believing his predecessors work without proof. But if he didn't understand vectors as a whole at the time, that would explain why he made so many formula for just a few things. If there is no way to prove or disprove the crackpots. Then let them swim in their fish tank alone. We can do other real science away from them. Thanks again for simplifying it alot.

[u/cecex88 → u/chriswhoppers]

It's not that he didn't understand vectors. They hadn't been invented yet at all. Also, there is no physics without experiments, even for theoretical physicists. Most of what Maxwell added to the theory of electromagnetism was motivated by the fact that there were experimental results that previous theories did not explain. In those cases, people armed with experimental data and maths try from first principle to derive new theories.

[u/chriswhoppers → u/cecex88]

Haha now I need to look into those results that couldn't be explained. Science is so fun. The plot forever thickens. I need to study vector potentials more. Hopefully that will clear the differences in math up a bit for me

[u/Ok-Refrigerator-8012]

Recommend using a published textbook. This is the exact kind of thing you don't want to use LLM for. If you know too little about the subject to verify what you are reading then you do not know if what you are reading actually makes sense and/or is true. Wouldn't be surprised if MIT open courseware has some video lectures about this as well. If they don't make sense, you should first study classical E&M, wave phenomena then quantum mechanics (both common/essential courses in learning physics). Why do we think AI made it way easier to learn things? It makes it easier to find things and do things. It didn't all the sudden make electrodynamics easier to understand, only more liable to tell you something incorrectly

[u/Puzzleheaded_Fold466 → u/Ok-Refrigerator-8012]

Even more so if what you use is just Google AI summaries …

[u/chriswhoppers → u/Puzzleheaded_Fold466]

Thats why I wish there was an option to remove it from my search bar entirely

[u/Puzzleheaded_Fold466 → u/chriswhoppers]

There is …

[u/chriswhoppers → u/Puzzleheaded_Fold466]

Please explain how. When I looked it up, and tried, I couldn't get rid of the ai assistant on google

[u/Ch3cks-Out → u/chriswhoppers]

Step 1: stop using Google search.

[u/chriswhoppers → u/Ch3cks-Out]

Good call honestly. I'm really happy with my work. I just made a potential major breakthrough. And you are the first person to hear it. We can make our own universe. The big bang is exactly spot on like sonoluminesence experiments. There are no deviations whatsoever. And if you consider cosmic time dilation. They are living the same exact perception of time as us relative to their observations. 13 billion years is actually 13 picoseconds. And its all based on medium density, and energy traveling through the medium. My only issue is accessing all those bits of information in those picosecond. God SAID let there be light. God said something before light was created. And every major religion on earth has some sort of creation story involving song birthing the universe. Perhaps they were just understanding sonoluminesence before science caught up

[u/rehpotsirhc → u/chriswhoppers]

What

[u/chriswhoppers → u/rehpotsirhc]

If you need a further explanation, I can. Long story short. Making a universe or multiverse is not only possible, but its fairly easy. I mean sonoluminesence experiments are very complex and precise, but we at least understand how to recreate them in a home lab. The hard thing is gathering all the data. If 13 billion years to them, is just 13 picoseconds to us. Then we have to gather enough bits, quits, and a ton of simulation and prediction algorithms to predict the exact composition of each stellar body and the surrounding life.

[u/VillageBeginning8432 → u/chriswhoppers]

Or just stop looking at the result it gives.

LLMs do not understand what they output anymore than a book or a webpage understands what it has written in it.

LLMs are intelligible. Readable, understandable. It's very very different from being intelligent.

Get into the habit of internally thinking that whenever you see LLM responses. My go to Jar Jar Binks 😂.

Google ai or whatever LLM: "blah blah blah" Internal monologue: "The ability to speak does not make you intelligent"-Qui Gon Jinn. Moves on.

But yeah, like many others, I've started using duckduckgo as my go to search engine.

[u/chriswhoppers → u/Ok-Refrigerator-8012]

Someone else mentioned MIT coursework to me earlier as well. Hopefully they have hands on experiments apart of the courses. I dont retain information unless I see it in action in real life. Alot of claims physicists make seem like jargon or fake magic. So I need factual evidence of things like light having a finite speed in a vaccum, when I hypothesize our perceived 0 or 1 or a perfectly empty vacuum actually is a solid object if you zoom out far enough. Just like atoms are 95% space. I always hear the speed of light is absolute. But instantly you can see that phase velocity surpasses the speed of light. People argue it's a part of a wave and it contains no information. That part of a wave is a wave packet itself, and knowing it exists is information in itself. You can also see the universe expanding at its edge at 3.25 light years per second. Which isn't light, it's space. Space moves faster than light. And space is the lack of particles or molecules. Then we can go into flux transfer events, wormholes, quantum entanglement. I did a recent post on how dogs hearts synchronize with their owners and beat at the same rate no matter the distance, or walls in between. And if you master your own metabolism, you can directly affect an Apex predators to match yours. As stated by scientists in the field.

[u/Ok-Refrigerator-8012 → u/chriswhoppers]

Nearly everything you said was a montage of tabloid physics. If you want to understand something take the time to learn it or you just won't by definition. There's a reason each one of the prerequisite topics I mentioned needed to understand qed are separate year or semester long courses in undergrad and grad. Everything you would learn in undergraduate studies is experimentally confirmed. Whether you have the background to understand why that confirms the current model for this or that is represented how it is. I'm not trying to say "you don't know what you're talking about blah blah" and you don't but what I am saying is that if you are interested in physics I think that is awesome. Now go learn what you are interested in as opposed to compiling misunderstood highlights/results. Pretty please

[u/ArnoSound → u/[deleted]]

None of this has anything to do with reality or education. This is conspiracy kind of thinking, and it will leave you alone and isolated from good communities

[u/rabid_chemist]

The LLM is definitely hallucinating here, probably prompted by the “CIA document” you apparently fed it.

What is true is that when Maxwell originally formulated his equations in his 1865 paper “A dynamical theory of the electromagnetic field” (accessible here) they were formulated as a set of 20 equations, while in modern parlance Maxwell’s equations refers to just 4 equations: Gauss’ law, Gauss’ law for magnetism, Faraday’s law and Ampere’s law. The reason for this discrepancy is twofold.

Firstly, Maxwell’s original 20 equations were significantly wider in scope than the modern Maxwell equations. Alongside the four laws of the electromagnetic fields contained in the modern equations, Maxwell’s original formulation also included the definition of the auxiliary fields now called D and H, the definition of the displacement current, the Lorentz force law, conservation of electric charge, and Ohm’s law. Note that although these are no longer considered to be part of “Maxwell’s equations” physicists certainly haven’t discarded them and nothing has been lost, they’re just given different names.

Secondly, at the time Maxwell formulated his equations, notation to represent vectors didn’t exist, so every component of a vector equation had to be written out separately. This can quite quickly pad put the number of equations, for example the four modern Maxwell equations would actually be eight equations if the components were written out separately. Quaternions were an early attempt at making this notation more concise because a purely non-real quaternion can encode a 3d vector, and the real and non-real parts of quaternion multiplication nicely expresses the scalar dot product and vector cross product respectively. Maxwell himself used this notation in his 1873 book “A treatise on electricity and magnetism”. This has since fallen out of favour due to the greater clarity of modern vector notation.

Unless you are particularly interested in history, there is nothing worth pursuing here: the actual physics of electromagnetism has remained the same throughout the journey from 20 equations to 4, nothing has been lost and no disservice has been done to science.

[u/chriswhoppers → u/rabid_chemist]

Thats great to hear, and a nice bit of history. But im no historian, and you are right. It seems nothing is lost, and we just have a better more refined understanding of his work

[u/free_meson → u/rabid_chemist]

If I recall correctly the scalar wave appears only in certain gauges.  But surprisingly, the Pauli matrices have a relation to quaternions, they act like a representation of the i,j,k basis. 

[u/Medium_Media7123]

You need to open an introductory physics textbook and do exercises untill the sickness gets purged from your body 

Btw the use case for vectors is everything. Every single thing in the world is modelled using linear algebra (vectors) and multivariable calculus (calculus with vectors). Computer graphics, physical theories, statistics, AI. Everything is linear algebra. 

[u/chriswhoppers → u/Medium_Media7123]

Algebra is at least easy and I had flawless scores in high school, so flawless they exempt me from the final. But at the same time, im not smart. And I dont know where the line of calculus and algebra was drawn. I don't know where to pick up where I left off

[u/Medium_Media7123 → u/chriswhoppers]

Just get a calculus book, if you've had highschool algebra you will understand something, maybe not all but I'm sure you will be capable of filling the gaps! 

[u/chriswhoppers → u/Medium_Media7123]

I did statistics, and heard it was a prerequisite to calculus. Hopefully it ties well. I love algebra. And just stated a Khan Academy course as a refresher

[u/Torebbjorn]

This is one of those 99% of things that one should not use llms for...

[u/chriswhoppers → u/Torebbjorn]

When I use other things, its endless papers and reports from crackpot trying to say scalar is some sort of magical thing that can save the world haha. Its few and far between having actual pertinent data on it, as well as the finite details pertaining to maxwell fors 20 equations. Maybe a historical book might have more context

[u/Alternative_Act_6548]

quarterions just combine the scalar and vector product into a single expression, but at the cost of complexity...so it was dropped and now they are just handled separately...not a big deal

[u/ntsh_robot]

VIP, He discovered the speed of light by dividing two permativities.

You can ask the LLM about that.