James Clerk Maxwell and Modern Physics

by Richard Glazebrook

Maxwell considered magnetic action as existing in the form of pressure or tension, or more generally, of some stress in some medium. The existence of a medium capable of exerting force on material bodies and of withstanding considerable stress, both pressure and tension, is thus a fundamental hypothesis with him; this medium is to be capable of motion, and electro-magnetic forces arise from its motion and its stresses.

Now, Maxwell’s fundamental supposition is that, in a magnetic field, there is a rotation of the molecules continually in progress about the lines of magnetic force. Consider now the case of a uniform magnetic field, whose direction is perpendicular to the paper; we are to look upon the lines of force as parallel strings of molecules, the axes of these strings being perpendicular to the paper. Each string is supposed to be rotating in the same direction about its axis, and the angular velocity of rotation is a measure of the magnetic force. In consequence of this rotation there will be differences of pressure in different directions in the medium; the pressure along the axes of the strings will be less than it would be if the medium were at rest, that in the directions at right angles to the axes will be greater, the medium will behave as though it were under tension along the axes of the molecules under pressure at right angles to them. Moreover, it can be shown that the pressure and the tension are both proportional to the square of the angular velocity—the square, that is, of the magnetic force—and this result is in accordance with the consequences of experiment.

More elaborate calculation shows that this statement is true generally. If we draw the lines of force in any magnetic field, and then suppose the molecules of the medium set in rotation about these lines of force as axes, with velocities which at each point are proportional to the magnetic force, the distribution of pressure throughout is that which we know actually to exist in the magnetic field.

According to this hypothesis, then, a permanent bar magnet has the power of setting the medium round it into continuous molecular rotation about the lines of force as axes. The molecules which are set in rotation we may consider as spherical, or nearly spherical, cells filled with a fluid, or an elastic solid substance, and surrounded by a kind of membrane, or sack, holding the contents together.

So far the model does not give any account of electrical actions which go on in the magnetic field.

The energy is wholly rotational, and the forces wholly magnetic.

Consider, however, any two contiguous strings of molecules. Let them cut the paper as shown in the two circles in [Fig. 1]:—

Fig. 1. Fig. 2.

Then these cells are both rotating in the same direction, hence at C, where they touch, their points of contact will be moving in opposite directions, as shown by the arrow heads, and it is difficult to imagine how such motion can continue; it would require the surfaces of the cells to be perfectly smooth, and if this were so they would lose the power of transmitting action from one cell to the next.