The National MagLab is funded by the National Science Foundation and the State of Florida.
These demonstrations about laws and tools associated with electricity and magnetism allow you to adjust variables at and to visualize invisible forces — which makes them almost better than the real thing.
Seeing is believing. In these animations, we show you what electricity and magnetism might look like if they weren't invisible.
Learn about electricity and magnetism — and have some fun while you're at it!
How do Maglev trains work? What are comets made of? How do bugs walk on water? This section demonstrates these and other concepts related to magnetism, electricity and other areas of science.
Whether you prefer your science short & sweet or long & detailed, we spell it out for you here in easy-to-understand language.
Read fun science stories told in comic strip style.
There is beauty and art in science. Gaze on these stories of discoveries that could be featured on museum walls instead of scientific journals.
Explore these surprising, unconventional and sometimes downright strange stories about high magnetic field research.
These special science graphics explain science stories in digestible steps and include optional detours for readers wanting more background to customize your reading journey.
Get to know these pioneers who went down in history for their groundbreaking work, including scientists behind common terms such as Amp, Celsius, Kelvin, hertz and tesla.
From the world's first compass to the magnetic force microscope and beyond, explore a variety of instruments, tools and machines throughout history.
Our timeline takes you through the highlights of electricity and magnetism and across the centuries.
Take a field trip to these high magnetic field landmarks around the globe.
Scientists take important steps toward a fuller understanding of electricity, as well as some fruitful missteps, including an elaborate but incorrect theory on animal magnetism that sets the stage for a groundbreaking invention.
1775
English chemist and physicist Henry Cavendish develops the concepts of capacitance and resistance, though most of his work with electricity is not published until the late nineteenth century.
Italian physicist Alessandro Volta invents a machine for generating static electricity, which he calls an electrophorus. The term also comes to be applied to the similar device created by Johannes Wilcke a decade earlier.
1777
German professor Georg Christoph Lichtenberg discovers that unusual patterns, which later come to be known as Lichtenberg figures, can be produced by electrifying fern spores or other fine powders and dusting them upon a surface that carries the opposite charge.
1778
Anton Mesmer, a German physician, establishes a magnetic healing practice based on his theories of animal magnetism in Paris after being accused of fraudulent activity in Vienna.
1781
Renowned chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier of France demonstrates that the conversion of liquids or solids into gases results in electrification.
1785
French physicist Charles-Augustin de Coulomb builds a torsion balance and offers quantitative proof of the inverse square laws of electric and magnetic forces theorized by Joseph Priestley 20 years earlier.
Martin Van Marum of Holland constructs a much more powerful electrostatic machine than had ever been built before and carries out a variety of experiments with electricity.
1787
Reverend Abraham Bennet discusses two important devices in Philosophical Transactions, one for detecting electricity (the gold leaf electroscope) and the other for amplifying a charge via induction (the electric doubler).
1791
University of Bologna anatomy professor Luigi Galvani reports his observations made over the course of 11 years on the effect of metal probes on the leg muscles of dissected frogs in the essay Commentary on the Effect of Electricity on Muscular Motion. He mistakenly attributes the muscular contractions he witnesses to an innate force he dubs animal electricity.
1796
When carrying out experiments with metals placed in his mouth similar to those of Johann Sulzer, Italian physicist Alessandro Volta first believes he is experiencing the effects of animal electricity, but then finds that he can produce a current in the absence of animal tissue by utilizing a piece of cardboard moistened with brine instead of his tongue. Accordingly, he infers that the effect is incited by touching dissimilar metals to a moist object.
