James Clerk Maxwell - A Sense of Wonder - Documentary

could you name a famous scientist from history any famous scientist it's unsightly the first one Einstein Einstein Isaac Newton Isaac Newton yeah yeah bro it you're interested in a guy called James Clark Maxwell James Clark Maxwell no no I haven't no really and in a little far from here leesport ish and I come for ten mail feed button he'll know I held him he never had the gyms clock marks or not like most people I did not have a clue who James Clark Marksville Wars yet I've been told that is one of the most important human beings that ever loved and one of the greatest scientists of all time I'm a poet and escorts every mine so I have to say that the Gowanus Johnny to find out more about James Clark Marksville and the Empire that he has hired on the modern world that we live in know so who was James Clark Marx well this is 14 industry James was born here in 1831 full of life full of interest and everything that was going on around him well he bombarded his elders with questions and his favorite question was what is the go of that thing and if he wasn't satisfied what's the particular goal of that Hey Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism was one of the real intellectual achievements of the 19th century and it was the first case of a unified theory this is the famous paper of 1864 and what she says that this velocity which is calculated is so nearly that of the then thought to be the speed of light that it seems we have strong reason to conclude that light itself including radiant heat and other radiations if any is an electromagnetic disturbance in the form of waves propagating through the electromagnetic field according to electromagnetic loss and that has been described by Fineman who was a professor in America as one of the greatest leaps ever made in human thought the holy grail of physics is to reduce everything to one set of equations one unified description and Maxwell set the standard and at the same time of course it did establish understanding of light and it led to there were all kind of practical implications it's extremely difficult for a layman like myself to try and get his head around the complexity of these world-changing theories that he was proposing so to try and understand this better I decided to visit Glasgow University and discuss Marshalls work the Jim Clark works well really is one of the biggest figures in the history of physics this was acknowledged by people knew the less than a stain in fact and it's surprising perhaps that Clark Maxwell isn't better known among the wider public because his contributions to physics are really enormous and everyone the sound of Einstein the probably heard of Newton as well the Clark Maxwell is really well up there with Einstein and Newton as they're really revolutionizing our understanding of a lot of things in the world of physics so there's there's lots of ways in which James Clerk Maxwell has as ongoing influence even though in the 21st century and firstly if you look at the area of physics that he worked in more in fact he watching a whole bunch of videos but the one he's probably best known for is an electromagnetism so even the very name tells you something about what Clark Maxwell did because and one of his his biggest achievements was to help us understand how two concepts electricity and magnetism were connected to each other in a room of wonder here that's right and we've got some electromagnetism demonstrations haha to show you the sorts of results that Maxwell was trying to explain and the proof of some of his predictions yeah as well so they're quite minima see in front of this year that would have been a kind of rudimentary version of s available to mark field so what was Mark will do Miller seed well so Maxwell was interested in trying to understand electricity and magnetism so magnetism have been known since ancient times you have materials that were magnetic that attracted other other materials but in the early 19th century there was a growing realization that electricity and magnetism were intimately connected and so experimenters like Faraday we're doing experiments to magnetize materials that otherwise weren't magnets temporarily by putting them close to an electric current and so that's what we've got here and if you flick so we've got a material here that's not magnetic and but if you flip the switch and put a current through the coil then it becomes magnetic up until the point where you cut the circuit again it's not magnetic anymore so that's an electromagnetic and related to that you can generate an electric current by moving a magnet inside it so you can see the current being generated here just by moving the magnet inside the coil so these were all experimental results and what Maxwell was trying to do was find the mathematical framework to describe them a set of equations that would explain all the phenomena that had been seen from this we are what do we see in the world around his nose the applications are well so so Maxwell put together his his famous equations describing electricity medicine and I'm the great prediction that came out of that and was electromagnetic radiation and so this is the sort of equipment that was used about 10 years after Maxwell's death to demonstrate electromagnetic waves so again in here we have a big coil like the one that we saw over there and when we pass a current through it we generated parts which are giving off radio waves can detect them with the radio over there and this these electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light so there's a realization that all of these phenomena were the same thing he was a very broad physicist and and he made important contributions to our understanding of thermodynamics the behavior of gases he developed the first color photograph period he experimented in this summer when he was between academic terms carried out experiments on color and he that he had a theory of color did this at Glenn layer I believe and his wife helped him do these experiments and there is a photograph of that he took a colored tartan or some some something like that that the first time that that had been done Martin was also a experimenting with light this is Sam sort of replicating one of his experiments so so what was he doing you have been but he was investigating what happens when we we mix colored lights when you mix colored lights the rules are different so when you mix colored paints so for example if you mix the red paint and the green paint in your paint box you tend to get a dark brown color but something quite different happens when we mix a red and green light by overlapping him on there and what Maxwell was interested in was what are the mathematical rules that will tell us what color will get when we mix some two other colors or any number of other colors so what we know nowadays we've got the mixture of red and green making yellow we bring blue into the mixture if you did this with paints you'd end up with a very dark dingy color if we add blue in there we get white in the middle so this is it's got amazing results that we we take three colors mix them together and we get something it hasn't got any color at all Maxwell was able also to create the mathematical rules it mean you can predict what color you're going to get when you mix certain lights and certain proportions this marriage of them of electricity elate magnetism as that's the fourth example of a unified theory yes in many ways it was and it was already the case that and there was an emerging understanding of how electricity and magnetism might be connected together but not and as elegant or a sort of complete a form as Maxwell was able to provide so the equations that we know referred to as Maxwell's equations had separately we'd known something about each of them but Maxwell was really the person that put the pieces together and morover was able to establish this connection with the speed of light so that's why we talk about the electromagnetic spectrum I think some of the key leaps forward that has been made in science over hundreds of years people white Newton and Einstein and indeed James Clerk Maxwell you've often come about because this key individual has been able to look at a problem slightly differently which brings fresh insight and allows them to spot connections between things Maxwell's ability despite these connections where others hadn't might have been something to do with the nature and not sure of his upbringing when we are here at theatres restored this restored to his glory very nearly huh as it was haha and Max was there something lovely not playful that's it would be it would be very conducive to to meet me thank you no but well you're right I'm having inspiration on trunk quality you know yes yeah they'd read what Gavin said they he famously said them conversation enriches the mind but solitude is a school of genius you know somebody maybe maybe mark for being alone here as an only child yes living here yeah just been a wooden beasts thoughts and that's the Sparta Dacia led them to these on the path they basically did it really went with great discoveries he would have played here and they reckon he used to swim in this pool aha this fascination with water and the fool water and water flowing like electricity he just seemed to make this well actions main yes yeah and you can almost understand why because he was surrounded by water on three sides of the farm his water he's got the earth for a mile down there and he's got the layer burn all down here like an inspirational view that says in there you know I'm standing here almost on the exact spot in fact the exact spot england Leah house you have James Marshall sod and wrote the treatise on electromagnetism not late that Lee's famous equals yeah yeah that's right there's only two of those milestones they were presented one to me I want to learn University yeah we had a big beam feast at bay and there lots of professors career yeah is there I thank great science and creative art are flip sides of the same coin the inspiration for booth comes from the same place science and poetry are equally valuable and complimentary views of the world I suppose one of the most intriguing aspects and that marks was the fact that the little poetry as well and I write poetry and have quite a few books published now and it wasn't utterly intriguing to find that the Clark Maxwell and I had this kind of thing in common and it was he was a pretty good versa fire I wouldn't see it it's the greatest poet of read but it's kinda like a novena of of a kind of Wordsworth Tennyson Kipling you know neglect traditional a Victorian versa files a problem in dynamics 19th of February 1854 an inextensible heavy chain lies on a smooth horizontal plane an impulsive force as applied at a required the initial motion of key let DSB the infinitesimal link of which for the present with only to think let t be the tension and T plus DT the same for the end that is nearest to be let a B P and I don't think he took ease is poetry too seriously like Robert Burns our national poet who said you know I am nee poet and essayist you know but but just like any Rhema and I think Marksville was at was a Rhema and you wrote these poems for fun it says Afeni we like G embodies Peter Pan and away so Clark Marx will never grew up he always a desk any childish sense a wonder about the universe in the world of them which is fantastic and it's what you need to be able to write poetry I think it's one of the aspects that any poet hires less a sense of wonder about the world from these two conditions we get three equations which serve to determine the proper relations between the first impulse and each coefficient and the form for the tension and this is sufficient to work out the problem and then if you choose you may thumb it and twist it the dawn's to amuse despite the general public not being vastly aware of Marx well he still has the ability to inspire others in their creative endeavors I've always been interested in science and music and always been interested as was play in the heart because as it's a very direct kind of instrument you just pluck a standing well affixed and string which creates a standing wave didn't really know much about Maxwell as well as before I moved here but then gradually picked up various bits about him absolutely and picked up that she was into music as well I played the guitar and wrote little ditties and parama parodies on other things and also in a way that he was not quite so well-known but had this amazing career amazing what he came up with but was quite quiet about it in a way unassuming and also that he really loved his family loved the countryside so all of that no he resonated with me was heartening a new music start medley and what what's the story I tried I tried to approach it almost well from two ways really thinking about sound just pure sound like I say there's the standing wave and the vibrating string so you're always very tactile II aware of the instrument on what it's doing but then I also love tunes and things that made me think about Maxwell like his Scottish nurse so there's a traditional side to it but also some of the the harm harmonies and things I used as well so it's all those kind of mixtures and then using effects on the harp sort of reflects some of his ideas of interference patterns and how light bounces off things and sound bounces off things so that I think has an elegance to it which if I understood Maxwell's equations I'm sure they have this elegance to them but in the music I can hear that elegance and that's there the last part has a homecoming sort of waltz feel because like I say I think he loved his home and his family and all that was very important to him rooted him very much so that's that are there and then a final sort of interference pattern again of using the same strings but with two different hands in a pattern I'm doing this because let's think about it and that's to do with his use of color I think in photography he had the three main colors sort of things he's bringing in so that's those three colors interacting to then resolve into this harmonic chord at the end which is a root note to third and a fifth which is the basis of all sort of harmony that it resolves to that music creates pictures and images and Arsenal's mind and for me you know listening to the the music you know I could just shut my eyes and imagine sunlight playin and water soft if an and their and marks will famously and then displayed in the stream and point near near the house England Lee aeran and I looked through and storms and so you can just imagine you know that the records in the waves harmed and water there and I just lovely marriage between no classical Heartland and the electronic clothes the jeans is created how did that can you manage your sounds come about electronic sounds I think can can mix with live music really really well pre-recorded stuff and live stuff so by having these other signs in and that can make you hear the harp differently I think but also I think it's so relevant to Maxwell's ideas James is using an ebow and things like that electromagnetic Bri and vibration coming out of that and affecting the streams and just all kinds of things that he's using of layering of sounds all natural sounds layered up so then they becomes something very different not what you're expecting and again I think that reflects a bit about how Maxwell thought about his ideas where it came from it's all out of your imagination so that's really where science comes from where everything comes from no I am an atheist and the man of my time but James Clark Maxwell was a man of her stain and a deeply committed Christian and often you see still visitors I mean then visitors that come you know the number plates are all the Continental number plates that's what you would say is very acting I assume this is a profit that s Nino in any one country are well-off it's very easy we have come across instances work when if you say Mike's well it's then the guy who cheated everybody out of them after their pensions Robert Robert Moton eyes that's often Anita yes that's kind of James Clark Maxwell it's not yet I mean one bits but I think that's but that's what I was kind of saying you did so much but it's the way of the unifying theory that has such a resonance today because of our digital technology and the fact that math happened in a big leap and a burst and I think that's what means the focus is on that because that's our modern-day miracle that's the thing all of us are still going isn't that just amazing oh well Feynman says you know the man who changed everything but he's quoted as saying that if you go for obtained thousand years for no you know Marvel's Nimal but if they look back to this plane we'll see the greatest thing that happened in the 19th century was it was the what can you what a marvel yeah yeah because there is is there for all time what he was doing was bringing to bear and deep theoretical thinking to make sense of experimental observations and in fact also to make quite startling predictions about future experimental observations yeah essentially our whole non-biological technology owes itself in a large in large measure to contribution like like natural so the way in which science can often lead with a theoretical insight which then gives fresh direction to experimental work and observational work that's a legacy that we have from the time of Maxwell and Kelvin and we still see that very at work today in the discoveries of particle physics through the Higgs boson or cosmology through the discovery of this and light from the video of the universe I can see it happening in the last 10 20 years that people are becoming more and more aware of Maxwell particularly here in Scotland perhaps professor Ricci is more perceptive than he realizes into this and into every questions later ahead recipes and clockwork types always the same old rich let's last year I was involved with a friend of mine who works for the Open University and he also does kind of science presentation shows for children and he wanted to do a show about the science and engineering of Southwest Scotland for the Whig tone boot festival and he thought it might be nice to have some songs in there so we spent a really interesting few weeks researching some of the leading lights of this region behind all this there's this incredible Colossus of science there and I had not really appreciated his influence before we read into this but you know actually trying to get maxwell fitted in to assure that involved anything other than maxwell was was really difficult because the scope and breadth of his work is so mind-boggling so we really just thought we can't really we're gonna have to just leave this to the end all right well write the song as the big show closer and and hopefully focal goal are we after this and think I'll like find a bit more out about this guy as I say you know trying to narrow it down to the the key events and his life as a man who achieved so much that was a real challenge the one about the electromagnetic waves the EM then you see how does that go he learned the work of Faraday which made him wonder whether magnetic and electric waves must fly through space together and figured since they fly along at light speed if you let them that light we see as part of the electromagnetic spectrum quickly slip Vermin spectrum that's an academically he's he has spent as a kid his whole professional life finding out where the different Scots tongues from around the country because of course there's you know better than anyone it's not just one thing but I find it most intriguing in the most exciting when the people speaking it don't have any notion that they're speaking in other than the normal language they're not thinking I'm going to use are Scots word just know they're just speaking their language and that's it's wonderful to see it as a living kind of breathing tongue that's still in use and it of course that's the that's the language that max all would have spoken and that was kind of one of the things that made him distinctive when he went back up to Edinburgh and was in amongst all the posh lads at the academy and he was still using very much his rural his his local accent and his local vocabulary and I think that made him stand out amongst the Edinburgh Academy labs yeah and I know coffee was debated but it it was Daphne Maxwell Daphne Maxwell can you imagine hilarious really short them but I actually keep you through each person sort of give them the background about what foot aspect of his life each verse was about I think they were suitably impressed with their the scope of this man's achievements and especially as you did earlier you you were M telling them how how his discoveries have impacted on the world that they live in and I think you know you can't impress that upon people enough that the things that we enjoy today didn't just appear out of thin air they've come from a long line of discoveries and you know small implements or smaller augmentations by generations but then the occasional blazing star like Maxwell and so these kids have I think they've taken onboard just what an important character this man is and a hope that they feel a sense of prayed that he's a Scott and you know someone who's associated with this region as well and can hold his head up next to any stain and Newton and anyone that you care to mention having no gone and this journey of discovery to find out who James Clark marks will I've been utterly astounded by the breadth and depth for the mine he is our true renaissance mine a true genius a man who embraced science the sciences he loved music he loved culture heroic poetry his legacy for me as the fact that he never lost that childlike curiosity that sends a wonder that just imbued it his whole life constantly asking what's the goal for that you you

Channel: Short Form Docs

Views: 183,437

Rating: 4.8488121 out of 5

Keywords: James Clerk Maxwell (Academic), Science, electromagnetism, Physicist (Profession), Dumfries And Galloway (Scottish Council Area), parton, Physics (Field Of Study), scottish, Scotland

Id: ANIkxDm8bF4

Length: 27min 37sec (1657 seconds)

Published: Wed May 27 2015