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General => General Technical Chat => Topic started by: easilyconfused on August 28, 2010, 03:45:35 pm

Title: Today's Faraday
Post by: easilyconfused on August 28, 2010, 03:45:35 pm
Do you ever wonder how much import we put on historical personalities due purely to their stodgy appearances? Would history assign as much respect to them if they had looked more like today's people? Would Michael Farady have been invited to lecture if he looked like this?
Title: Re: Today's Faraday
Post by: dmlandrum on August 28, 2010, 05:12:41 pm
I want one of those Faraday t-shirts now.
Title: Re: Today's Faraday
Post by: MightyTwin on August 28, 2010, 11:56:50 pm
I want one of those Faraday t-shirts now.

Seconded.
Title: Re: Today's Faraday
Post by: Time on August 29, 2010, 03:28:41 am
Why Faraday? Maxwell was more important.
Title: Re: Today's Faraday
Post by: dmlandrum on August 29, 2010, 08:05:14 pm
Faraday's ideas on action-at-a-distance being caused by fields with specific field lines was what allowed Gauss and Maxwell to mathematically codify the behavior of electricity and magnetism. Now, there's no way of knowing if someone else wouldn't have had the same ideas as Faraday, but without Faraday, Maxwell and Gauss would've had to build on someone else's work, and that might have happened much later, or proven false, or any number of other outcomes.

So, no, we needed Faraday.
Title: Re: Today's Faraday
Post by: Time on August 29, 2010, 08:10:52 pm
No one said we didn't need him.
Title: Re: Today's Faraday
Post by: Rhythmtech on August 30, 2010, 08:40:47 pm
Put me down for a Faraday shirt. 
Title: Re: Today's Faraday
Post by: retched on August 30, 2010, 10:21:10 pm
 Put me down for a 'Dave's head on Faraday's portrait' shirt.
Title: Re: Today's Faraday
Post by: rossmoffett on August 31, 2010, 02:17:35 am
I think an iPod or a smartphone might be more appropriate than a cigarette these days.
Title: Re: Today's Faraday
Post by: dmlandrum on August 31, 2010, 02:59:08 am
Yeah, the cigarette makes Michael look a bit like Andy Warhol.