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.
The first telegraphs are constructed and Michael Faraday produces much of his brilliant and enduring research into electricity and magnetism, inventing the first primitive transformer and generator.
1830
Scottish-American scientist Joseph Henry suggests building a telegraph utilizing a line with an electromagnet connected to one end that can be controlled at the other end.
1831
English chemist and physicist Michael Faraday experimentally observes that a current in a circuit can excite a current in a second circuit when the current in the first circuit changes, the basis of Faraday’s law of induction.
Joseph Henry discovers the principle of self-induction, and with his improved electromagnet design, he successfully lifts more than a ton of iron.
On an Arctic expedition, British explorer James Ross and his uncle Sir John Ross physically locate the Earth’s north magnetic pole.
1832
German scientist Paul Erman invents a simple magnetometer, which he then uses in the first large-scale survey of the Earth’s magnetic field.
Samuel Morse first conceives his version of the electric telegraph on a return voyage to the United States from England, where he had been studying art.
Parisian instrument maker Hyppolyte Pixii builds a small machine, known today as a magneto, capable of producing alternating current.
1833
Michael Faraday experiments in electrochemistry and formulates his laws of electrolysis.
German scientists Carl Friedrich Gauss Wilhelm Weber builds a telegraph line in Göttingen that is almost a mile long and uses a galvanometer as a receiver.
1834
French physicist Jean-Charles Peltier discovers that a difference in temperature can be produced by a current passing through a circuit of two dissimilar metals connected to each other at two junctions (the Peltier effect is the reverse of the Seebeck effect).
Heinrich Friedrich Emil Lenz, a German physicist, deduces the law that came to be known as Lenz's Law, which predicts the flow direction of an induced current.
Carl Friedrich Gauss establishes the Göttingen Magnetic Union, a network of magnetic observatories, most located in Europe.
English physicist Charles Wheatstone uses revolving mirrors to measure the speed of electricity traveling through nearly 8 miles of wire. Although his calculations mistakenly lead him to the conclusion that electricity travels faster than light, his ingenious experiment corrects the common belief of the time that electricity traveled instantaneously.
American blacksmith Thomas Davenport constructs an electric motor that produces enough energy to power a small model electric railway. Later he would use his motor to supply power to machinery in his shop.
1835
Carl Friedrich Gauss devises his famous electrostatic law, though it is not published until more than 30 years later.
1836
English chemist John Daniell develops an electric cell, now known as the Daniell cell, that efficiently provides a sustained current during continuous usage and is a great improvement over the voltaic cell.
1837
William Grove, a British physicist, becomes the father of the fuel cell when he experimentally combines oxygen and hydrogen to produce water and electricity, a reverse of the reaction demonstrated by William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Michael Faraday develops the concept of a dielectric constant to express the relative ability of dielectric materials to support electrostatic forces.
French physicist Claude-Servais-Mathias Pouillet invents the tangent galvanometer, a significant improvement over a similar device produced by Johann Schweigger 17 years before.
Charles Wheatstone and William Cooke demonstrate the first working telegraph in Britain. Their initial device uses a receiver with five magnetic needles, but before the Wheatstone-Cooke telegraph would be used commercially several improvements are made, including reducing the number of needles to one.
1838
Russian engineer and physicist Moritz von Jacobi of St. Petersburg builds the first boat powered by electricity and demonstrates it for Tsar Nicholas I on the River Neva.
Michael Faraday develops a general theory of electricity by appropriating his model of magnetic lines of induction. He also discovers what is often referred to as the Faraday dark space near the cathode of a Crookes-style tube when an electric current is passed through the gas present in the partially evacuated tube.
