Detecting a Magnetic Field

Short Description of Topic

The Main Idea

A compass can be used to determine the magnetic field in a wire. If a compass is not in the proximity of any iron or steel object, the compass will naturally point in the direction of the Earth's magnetic north pole. If a current carrying wire is brought near the compass, the compass needle will deflect.

A Mathematical Model

A useful attribute of a compass is that you can calculate the the magnetic field of current carrying wire when you figure out the deflection angle. This equation is: [math]\displaystyle{ B_{wire}=B_{earth} tan(\theta) }[/math] where [math]\displaystyle{ \theta }[/math] is the deflection angle, [math]\displaystyle{ B_{earth} }[/math] is the earth's magnetic field which is a constant value of 2e-5 Tesla.

A Computational Model

How do we visualize or predict using this topic. Consider embedding some vpython code here Teach hands-on with GlowScript

Examples

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Connectedness

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History

This phenomenon was discovered by Danish scientist, Hans Oersted in 1826. He found that the biggest effect is largest when the wire is pointing north-south

See also

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References

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