Why Fields?

Time delays in forces exerted at a distance

What convinced physicists that they needed this new concept of a field of force? Although we have been dealing mostly with electrical forces, let's start with a magnetic example. (In fact the main reason I've delayed a detailed discussion of magnetism for so long is that mathematical calcula tions of magnetic effects are handled much more easily with the concept of a field of force.) First a little background leading up to our example. A bar magnet, (a), has an axis about which many of the electrons' orbits are oriented. The earth itself is also a magnet, although not a barshaped one. The interaction between the earth-magnet and the bar magnet, (b), makes them want to line up their axes in opposing directions (in other words such that their electrons rotate in parallel planes, but with one set rotating clockwise and the other counterclockwise as seen looking along the axes). On a smaller scale, any two bar magnets placed near each other will try to align themselves head-to-tail, (c).

Now we get to the relevant example. It is clear that two people sepa rated by a paperthin wall could use a pair of bar magnets to signal to each other. Each person would feel her own magnet trying to twist around in response to any rotation performed by the other person's magnet. The practical range of communication would be very short for this setup, but a sensitive electrical apparatus could pick up magnetic signals from much farther away. In fact, this is not so different from what a radio does: the electrons racing up and down the transmitting antenna create forces on the electrons in the distant receiving antenna. (Both magnetic and electric forces are involved in real radio signals, but we don't need to worry about that yet.)

A question now naturally arises as to whether there is any time delay in this kind of communication via magnetic (and electric) forces. Newton would have thought not, since he conceived of physics in terms of instanta neous action at a distance. We now know, however, that there is such a time delay. If you make a long-distance phone call that is routed through a communications satellite, you should easily be able to detect a delay of about half a second over the signal's round trip of 50,000 miles. Modern measurements have shown that electric, magnetic, and gravitational forces all travel at the speed of light, 3x10⁸ m/s. (In fact, we will soon discuss how light itself is made of electricity and magnetism.)

If it takes some time for forces to be transmitted through space, then apparently there is some thing that travels through space. The fact that the phenomenon travels outward at the same speed in all directions strongly evokes wave metaphors such as ripples on a pond.

More evidence that fields of force are real: they carry energy.

The smoking-gun argument for this strange notion of traveling force ripples comes from the fact that they carry energy.

First suppose that the person holding the bar magnet on the right decides to reverse hers, resulting in configuration (d). She had to do me chanical work to twist it, and if she releases the magnet, energy will be released as it flips back to (c). She has apparently stored energy by going from (c) to (d). So far everything is easily explained without the concept of a field of force.

But now imagine that the two people start in position (c) and then simultaneously flip their magnets extremely quickly to position (e), keeping them lined up with each other the whole time. Imagine, for the sake of argument, that they can do this so quickly that each magnet is reversed while the force signal from the other is still in transit. (For a more realistic example, we'd have to have two radio antennas, not two magnets, but the magnets are easier to visualize.) During the flipping, each magnet is still feeling the forces arising from the way the other magnet used to be oriented. Even though the two magnets stay aligned during the flip, the time delay causes each person to feel resistance as she twists her magnet around. How can this be? Both of them are apparently doing mechanical work, so they must be storing magnetic energy somehow. But in the traditional Newtonian conception of matter interacting via instantaneous forces at a distance, potential energy arises from the relative positions of objects that are interacting via forces. If the magnets never changed their orientations relative to each other, how can any potential energy have been stored?

The only possible answer is that the energy must have gone into the magnetic force ripples crisscrossing the space between the magnets. Fields of force apparently carry energy across space, which is strong evidence that they are real things.

This is perhaps not as radical an idea to us as it was to our ancestors. We are used to the idea that a radio transmitting antenna consumes a great deal of power, and somehow spews it out into the universe. A person working around such an antenna needs to be careful not to get too close to it, since all that energy can easily cook flesh (a painful phenomenon known as an "RF burn").