ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Oersted's law

Oersted's law is a fancy way of saying that magnets can move things without touching them. You know how when you play with magnets, they stick to each other or to metal things? Well, when a magnet moves or changes, it can also make things around it move as well.

This is because magnets have something called magnetic fields around them, which is like an invisible force that pushes or pulls things around. Oersted's law is all about how this magnetic field can make electric currents, which are like little flows of electricity, move too.

Basically, if you have a wire and you put it near a magnet, the magnet's magnetic field can make the electric current in the wire start to move. This is called electromagnetic induction. Oersted discovered this way back in 1820, and it was a really big deal because it showed that electricity and magnetism are two sides of the same coin.

So, in short, Oersted's law is all about how magnets can make electric currents move, and how this discovery helped us understand more about electricity and magnetism.