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Note on the Antecedents of Clerk-Maxwell's Electrodynamical-Wave-Equations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2014

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The first obvious difficulty which presents itself, in trying to derive Clerk-Maxwell's equations from those of the elastic-solid theory, appears in the fact that the latter, being linear, do not impose any relations among simultaneous disturbances. Thus, for instance, they indicate no reason for the associated disturbances which, in Maxwell's theory, constitute a ray of polarised light. Hence it appears that we must look on the vectors of electric and magnetic force, if they are to be accounted for on ordinary dynamical principles, as being necessary concomitants, qualities, or characteristics of one and the same vector-disturbance of the ether, and not themselves primarily disturbances. From this point of view the disturbance, in itself, does not correspond to light, and may perhaps not affect any of our senses. And the very form of the elastic equation at once suggests any number of sets of two concomitants of the desired nature, which are found to be related to one another in the way required by Maxwell's equations.

Type
Proceedings
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1895

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References

page 213 note * Stokes, On the Dynamical Theory of Diffraction,” Camb. Phil. Trans. ix. (1849)Google Scholar.