The title of this week’s Cosmos, “The Electric Boy,” isn’t a Spielberg movie. It just sounds like one. Our electric boy is Michael Faraday (1791-1867), who puzzled out electricity and magnetism. Without his discoveries, says Tyson, we might not be using electricity, watching TV and computing. Blame Faraday for Twitter and 19 Kids and Counting.
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You&#039;re thinking of <i>I Sing the Body Electric</i>.
The coolest thing about magnetism is that it&#039;s a relativistic effect, the only one that you see every day. Currents in a wire produce magnetic fields, which exert a force on moving charges outside the wire. But what if you look at things from the electron&#039;s point of view? No current, therefore no magnetic field, and yet the &quot;moving charge&quot; still moves. It&#039;s the coolest thing I get to teach. No lie.
&lt; shoves glasses back up his nose &gt;