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 Scientific Revolution takes hold, facilitating the groundbreaking work of luminaries such as William Gilbert, who took the first truly scientific approach to the study of magnetism and electricity and wrote extensively of his findings.
1600
Following nearly two decades of experimentation, English physician William Gilbert completes his opus on magnetism, De Magnete, Magneticisique Corporibus, et de Magno Magnete Tellure (On the Magnet, Magnetic Bodies, and the Great Magnet of the Earth). The work includes the first use of the term electric, which was coined by Gilbert from the Greek word for amber (electron), the first major classification of electric and non-electric substances, and one of the earliest descriptions of the Earth as a magnetic entity.
1629
Italian Jesuit philosopher Niccolò Cabeo publishes his observations on electrical attraction and repulsion in Philososphia Magnetica, noting that contact between two attracting materials may cause them to subsequently repel each other.
1635
English clergyman Henry Gellibrand ascertains that magnetic declination changes over time by comparing new measurements to those he obtained 12 years earlier, and publishes his findings.
1644
French philosopher René Descartes offers one of the first mechanical, rather than animistic, explanations of magnetism, which involves a complex interaction between effluvia, threads and ducts.
1646
In Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or, Enquiries into Very many received Tenets, and commonly presumed truths, English physician Sir Thomas Browne first uses the term electricity, which he defines as “a power to attract strawes or light bodies, and convert the needle freely placed.”
1660
German physicist Otto von Guericke invents a machine capable of generating static electricity by applying friction against a sulfur ball in a glass globe rotated on an iron shaft with a hand crank.
1672
Noticing that the sulfur ball component of his electric generator could be made to glow by the electricity it produced, Otto von Guericke becomes the first observer of electroluminescence.
1675
Robert Boyle, an avid British experimenter, publishes Experiments and Notes about the Mechanical Origine or Production of Electricity, in which he describes the transmission of electricity through a vacuum.
1692
Edmond Halley, an English mathematician and astronomer, suggests that the Earth consists of spheres within spheres, each of which slowly rotates with respect to the other spheres and is independently magnetized. Halley uses his view of the planet to explain why magnetic declination slowly changes over time.
1699
Edmond Halley carries out the first magnetic declination survey and publishes a chart of his findings two years later.
