James Clerk

In order to rmderstand how light can be controlled, we must first review some of tire basic properties of tire electromagnetic field [8], The electromagnetic tlieory of light is governed by tire equations of James Clerk Maxwell. The field phenomena in free space with no sources are described by tire basic set of relationships below ... 

Color and Color Separation. In 1860,James Clerk MaxweU discovered that all visible colors could be matched by appropriate combinations of three primary colors, red, green, and blue (RGB). His experiment involved mixtures of colored lights added together to produce other colors or white light. This additive color is weU represented by the primaries RGB. Indeed, human color vision is trichromatic, ie, human visual response approximates receptors for the colors recognized as red, green, and blue (see Color). 

It is one of the wonders of the history of physics that a rigorous theory of the behaviour of a chaotic assembly of molecules - a gas - preceded by several decades the experimental uncovering of the structure of regular, crystalline solids. Attempts to create a kinetic theory of gases go all the way back to the Swiss mathematician, Daniel Bernouilli, in 1738, followed by John Herapath in 1820 and John James Waterston in 1845. But it fell to the great James Clerk Maxwell in the 1860s to take... 

In 1872 Heaviside s first paper, Comparing of Electromotive Forces, was published. Heaviside s second paper was published in 1873 and attracted the attention of Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell. In 1873 Heaviside was inspired by Maxwell s treatise on electricity and magnetism. It took Heaviside several years to fully understand Maxwell s book, which he then set aside to follow his own course of thinking. Finding Maxwell s conventional mathematics difficult to apply to practical matters, Heaviside... 

James Clerk Maxwell is the one theoretical physicist between Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein of a stature comparable to theirs. Maxwell s contributions to science ranged over many areas, of which the two greatest were his creation of the electromagnetic the-oiy of light, and his work on molecular physics, gas theoiy, and statistical mechanics. He entered the scientific scene in the early 1850s, immediately after the principle of conseiwation of energy had been established. Its impact is seen everywhere in his work. 

Campbell, L., and Garnett, W. (1882). The Life of James Clerk Maxwell. London Macmillan. 

Everitt, C. W. F. 1975). James Clerk Maxwell, Physicist and Natural Philosopher. New York Scribner. 

Harman, P. (1998). The Natural Philosophy of James Clerk Maxwell. Cambridge, Eng. Cambridge University Press. Siegel, n. M. (1991). hniovatioti in Maxwell s Electromagnetic Theory. Cambridge, Eng. Cambridge University Press. Whittaker, E. T. (1954). History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity, Vols. 1-2. New York Philosophical Libraiy. 

See also Carnot, Nicolas Leonard Sadi Faraday, Michael Fourier, Jean Baptiste Joseph Helmholtz, Hermann von Joule, James Prescott Maxwell, James Clerk Rankme, William John Macquorn. 

The earliest hint that physics and information might be more than just casually related actually dates back at least as far as 1871 and the publication of James Clerk Maxwell s Theory of Heat, in which Maxwell introduced what has become known as the paradox of Maxwell s Demon. Maxwell postulated the existence of a hypothetical demon that positions himself by a hole separating two vessels, say A and B. While the vessels start out being at the same temperature, the demon selectively opens the hole only to either pass faster molecules from A to B or to pass slower molecules from B to A. Since this results in a systematic increase in B s temperature and a lowering of A s, it appears as though Maxwell s demon s actions violate the second law of thermodynamics the total entropy of any physical system can only increase, or, for totally reversible processes, remain the same it can never decrease. Maxwell was thus the first to recognize a connection between the thermodynamical properties of a gas (temperature, entropy, etc.) and the statistical properties of its constituent molecules. 

Two theoreticians working in the latter half of the nineteenth century changed the very nature of chemistry by deriving the mathematical laws that govern the behavior of matter undergoing physical or chemical change. One of these was James Clerk Maxwell, whose contributions to kinetic theory were discussed in Chapter 5. The other was J. Willard Gibbs, Professor of Mathematical Physics at Yale from 1871 until his death in 1903. 

This result was experimentally discovered in the nineteenth century, but it could not be explained by Maxwells theory of electromagnetism. (James Clerk Maxwell was a Scottish physicist whose formulation of the laws of electricity and magnetism were... 

His periodic system did not meet with universal approval. This comes as no great surprise today, such revolutionary ideas would be termed a "paradigm shift". Since the time of Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, scientists had been to formulating scientific laws in eguations. After all, had James Clerk Maxwell in a stroke of genius not very convincingly demonstrated the... 

Table 3.2 The collection dish of the JCMT telescope on Hawaii. The 15m diameter JCMT is the largest astronomical telescope in the world designed specifically for sub-millimeter astronomy. (Reproduced by permission of the James Clerk Maxwell Radio Telescope)...

Sub-mm Common User Bolometric Array on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) on Hawaii. 

James Clerk Maxwell predicted the existence of electromagnetic waves in 1864 and developed the classical sine (or cosine) wave description of the perpendicular electric and magnetic components of these waves. The existence of these waves was demonstrated by Heinrich Hertz 3 years later. 

Maxwell, James Clerk. "Physical Science." Encyclopedia Britannica. 9th ed. 1875. 19 13. 

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