Michael Faraday was the first to realize that the shape of electromagnetic field lines is extraordinarily expressive of their dynamical effects. We can understand intuitively many things about the forces transmitted by the fields by looking at the topology of the field lines. This is especially true when the field lines are animated. The examples given here are only a few of many. (If you do not have a movie player, download QuickTime 3 to view both avi and quicktime files)

Physics and mathematics by Professors John Belcher and Stanislaw Olbert. 3D modeling/animations and Physics demonstrations by Mark Bessette. MAX scripting by Larry Minton. All animations are generated using 3D Studio MAX 2.0/2.5. This effort is supported by funds from The Helena Foundation, the MIT Classes of 51 and 55, the MIT School of Science, and MIT Academic Computing.

A poster presented at the January 1999 AAPT Meeting explains some of the pedagogy, mathematics, and physics of this effort. This file is in pdf format and is 300K in size. Comments to jwb@space.mit.edu.

Magnet Moving In And Out Of A Coil Of Wire
Magnet Falling Through A Ring With Non-zero Resistance
Magnet Levitating Above A Ring or Disk With Zero Resistance
Magnet Suspended Below A Ring With Zero Resistance
Magnet Falling Through A Ring With Zero Resistance

To Contents

Point Charge Attracted To Charged Sphere
Point Charge Repelled By A Charged Sphere

To Contents

Magnetic Dipole Radiation From a Dipole That Turns On
Magnetic Dipole Radiation From a Dipole That Turns Off
Magnetic Dipole Radiation From A Sinusoidally Varying Dipole--The Near/Transition Zone
Magnetic Dipole Radiation From A Sinusoidally Varying Dipole--The Transition/Far Zone

To Contents

Magnetic Dipole Oscillating In A Background Field

To Contents