An electric current produces a magnetic field. This is the principle of the electric motor - varying electric currents moving along wires make magnets with drive shafts spin around in circles.

A moving magnet makes an electric current flow in a nearby conductor. This is the principle behind the dynamo - magnets being whirled around mechanically on one end of a drive shaft make electric currents flow along wires.

Michael Faraday discovered the links between electricity and magnets - that they are actually a single force: electromagnetism. To explain how the effects of electromagnetism work, he invented the scientific concept of THE FIELD OF FORCE. The effects of the fields of force from magnets and electric currents are not felt in an aura-like area around the magnet, as I had until recently believed, but rather in specific curves around the object. You can witness this for yourself. Put a magnet under a piece of paper and place iron shavings on top of the paper. The shavings do not shift to gather in the area above the magnet, but rather form curved lines showing the lines of the field of force, which look like the ripples in a pond if the paper is the surface of the water and the magnet is the stone which has been dropped into it.

Faraday continued this idea to an ultimate expansion of his concept of the field of force to include not only the effects of electromagnetic fields, but EVERY force. The universe is filled with forces of one kind or another.

This is where the concept of the field of force gets very interesting.

Imagine an object and its field of force. Now imagine a second object with its field of force. Instead of curved lines indicating a single field, we now have a web, where the two fields of force overlap. Now, we all know that there are more than two objects emitting forces in the universe. Imagine the complexity of the web in which we are all caught, of which we are all a part, which we all, to varying degrees, can control.

Not only can we recognize that we are within a near infinite number of fields of force, but that a near infinite number of things are (or CAN BE) within one's own field of force, and both of these seemingly opposite relationships, just as the electric generator and the dynamo, can be used to one's advantage.

You cannot have an electric field without a magnetic field, just as you cannot be affected by the web without having an effect on it: The forces you emit affect the web of forces of the universe.

This article was posted on July 14, 2004

About The Author

Marie DePierre is currently a starving artist / psych major at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. You can save your soul at http://litote.blogspot.com
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