Robin beat me to the punch... I was changing spark-plugs and serpentine belts on my car!
Robin hits the nail on the head... Anything mathematical is the MODEL, and is supposed to reflect physical reality. My question was about the physical world -- what I was asking got was a rational, qualitative, cause and effect sort of explanation. As Robin stated, twice now, and I'll state it a third time, "The perpendicular nature of E and B fields existed PRIOR to Maxwell, or even cavemen, or even life on this planet!" I'm afraid that this reflects very poorly on JC's understanding of what is more fundamental, the experiment (physical reality, facts) or model (theory). JC has shown a great ability to regurgitate what he has read in his textbooks, in great detail, but his responses to this simple question seems to indicate that he hasn't any idea of the difference between physical reality and the mathematical models that attempt to explain what is observed. Care to put your horse before the cart this time and give it another stab, Joshua? And you'd better not have any mathematical jargon in your answer... PS: I mean, stab at explaining perpendicularity of E and B fields, not stab your horse! :-) -Mark -----Original Message----- From: mix...@bigpond.com [mailto:mix...@bigpond.com] Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2011 4:35 PM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: Re: [Vo]: Why are the electric and magnetic fields perpendicular? In reply to Joshua Cude's message of Wed, 25 May 2011 17:54:32 -0500: Hi, [snip] >Maxwell's equations were developed to describe laboratory electricity >and magnetism experiments. ...from which the peculiar perpendicular nature of the phenomenon was already evident. >The resulting equations then predicted the existence of electromagnetic >waves with the correct speed. As Maxwell put it: "The conclusion was >inescapable: light is "an electromagnetic disturbance in the form of >waves" propogated in the ether." True. >The equations also require that the >field are perpendicular. I think that was already evident from the experiments, and the maths was designed specifically to encompass this fact (otherwise it would have yielded incorrect results). Note that Maxwell actually brought together the work done by a number of others and created an encompassing mathematical treatment of their work, but the perpendicular aspect was already in that work. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html
