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THE ORIGINS OF QUANTUM PHYSIC S José Luis Romero Ibarra graduated with a PhD in physics from the Universidad de Guadalajara. He did post-doctoral work at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, and has held research fellowships in Concepción, Chile, and Rostock, Germany. In the course of his academic career, he has taught mechanics, electromagnetism, and quantum physics, among other subjects.
The phenomenon of magnetism has been known for a very, very long time, since before the advent of capitalism, or even the Middle Ages, before feudalism or the development of aristocracies. The word magnetism evokes many things for us in these postmodern times we live in. There are those, for example, who perform New Age therapies with magnets, and perhaps some of us still think of that German doctor whose last name was Mesmer. Not to mention “coaching.” But there is yet another perspective that tends to bring the concept closer to us.
Without the existence of this bipartite field, it would be difficult to live: it’s as simple as that. Take light, for example. It doesn’t matter whether it’s red, green, or white: it’s always an electromagnetic field. We are also familiar with electric fields functioning alone, as on those dry days when we find ourselves giving “shocks” to other people. Magnetism, moreover, is what helps us keep the fridge door closed (there is a magnet in the strip of plastic that runs around the frame of the door). Without an understanding of magnetism, it would be impossible to build a television, or to have perfected its functioning, from cathode ray tubes to LED screens. Neither would we have computers, nor the cellular telephones that allow us to send messages, listen to music… or date online.
GADGETS
The development of technology over the past century would have been impossible without magnetism, and technology would be impossible without science. It is this scientific perspective that we sometimes fail to consider. In the case of magnetism, let us remember that it is seldom found alone: it tends to go hand in hand with electricity. In physics, magnetism is a result of the existence of a magnetic field, just as electricity is that of an electric field. Since they are so often found together, however, we generally speak of electromagnetic fields.
