ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

History of electromagnetic theory

Electromagnetic theory is all about something called electricity and magnetism.

A long time ago, people noticed that magnets could attract certain metals like iron. They didn't know why this happened, but they found it interesting anyway.

Then, around 200 years ago, a man named Hans Christian Oersted was doing an experiment with electricity and noticed that when he passed an electric current through a wire, he created a magnetic field around it. This was the first time people began to understand the connection between electricity and magnetism.

Another brilliant scientist named James Clerk Maxwell went on to study electricity and magnetism in much more detail. He discovered that electricity and magnetism are actually two sides of the same coin - they're related to each other in a big way. He created a set of equations to describe how electricity and magnetism work together, which became known as Maxwell's equations.

Maxwell's equations helped people understand that light is actually a form of electromagnetic radiation. This means that light is made up of tiny electric and magnetic waves that travel through space.

Later, other scientists like Heinrich Hertz and Guglielmo Marconi used electromagnetic theory to develop wireless communication. They found that they could generate electromagnetic waves that could carry messages through the air, which we now know as radio waves.

Today, we use electromagnetic theory in all sorts of ways. We use it to generate electricity and power our homes, to make televisions and computers work, and to send messages wirelessly through the air. It's all thanks to the hard work of people like Oersted, Maxwell, Hertz, and Marconi who studied the connections between electricity and magnetism, and paved the way for the modern world we live in today.