A science column Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

A science column - Essay Example We have to charge our cell phones whenever they are exhausted of energy/power. This we have to do by using electricity and we wonder how electricity and the cell phones are related such that we are able to communicate with people far away from us once the two have been fused together. Sometimes, we have magnets which attract certain things such s iron materials and other types of magnetic materials. We wonder where such force of attraction is originating from inside the magnet, just a piece of steel or iron. All these fascinations are the results of certain discoveries made some time back in the history of science and have been integrated over time to operate in some ways which actually make life easier and convenient. The relationship between electricity and magnetism can be traced back to the times of the greatest scientists who contributed so much to the development of electricity ad electric discoveries such as Michael Faraday and Ampere. This paper will look at the integration b etween the two laws developed by Michael Faraday and Ampere to explain the relationship between electricity and magnetism. Michael Faraday developed a law which tried to explain this relationship by drawing a connecting line between electric transfers and magnetism. The laws can be defined in terms of electromotive force (emf), the force believed to be the driving force of an electric current, as Faraday notes. The law states that: â€Å"A time- changing magnetic flux though a closed circuit induces an emf in the circuit.† (Sadiku) Faraday’s electromagnetic induction can be divided into two laws which are however related to each other and tries to explain the flow and the induction of magnetism in a substance. The first law states that: â€Å"whenever a conductor is placed in a varying magnetic field, an emf is induced which is called the induced emf, if the circuit is closed, current is also induced which is called the induced current.† (Sadiku) The second law states that â€Å"the induced emf is equal to the rate of change of flux linkages whereby the flux linkage is the product of the number of turns of the coils n and the flux associate with it.† (Sadiku). According to this law, the number of turns in the coil will then determine the amount of current flowing through the wire and vice versa as shown in the diagram. This emf only last as long as the magnetic current within the circuit continues to change. In this way Faraday developed a law which describes the electromagnetic induction whereby, an electric field is usually induced or created by a changing magnetic field. When current flows in a solenoid wounded around a magnetic material, the material becomes magnetized and this creates the potential difference. It is this difference which keeps the current flowing from one point to another. The emf developed is the force that works against the electric potential commonly referred to as the voltage. The common voltage in dry cell s is 1.5 and has the electric potential moving from the positive electrode t