The Fundamentals, Part 2: Electromagnetism, a.k.a. "The positive side has the bump, right?"

Ah, electromagnetism. This fundamental interaction of matter is so much more important than most would believe. Like gravity, the effects of electromagnetism have always been known by humankind, in one form or another. However, it wasn’t until way, way later that we found out what it truly was, or how integral it is to the existence of... well, everything. It took a man by the name of James Clerk Maxwell to get science on its way. He published his Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism in 1873, pointing out several interconnected properties between the two phenomena, like: 

Point 1: Electric charges of different sign (positive, negative) attract, and like ones repel. The same goes with magnetic poles: north pulls south, and pushes away other norths. 

Point 2: Running an electric current through a wire creates a magnetic field. Likewise, moving a magnet through a loop of wire creates an electric current. 

What he had described was the newly understood phenomena called... electromagnetism. 
However, we have to give Hans Christian Ørsted the honor of first noticing this unification. Well, at least part of the honor; as we’ll see, he wasn’t exactly sure what he was dealing with. 

"What is this? PHYSICS FOR ANTS!?"

Rewind a little, back to the year 1820. Hans, being the nurturing professor that he was, invited students to a personal demonstration of the effects of both electricity and magnetism (separate experiments, mind you. There was no connection there yet). He found during the course of these tests that every time he induced a current in his wire, the compass he was using for the other experiment moved. He did it again. 

And again. 

And again, always with the same result. For months, he worked on explaining how this phenomena worked, but, in the end, he just published his experiments without explanation.

It took yet another thinker, André Ampere, to make something out of Ørsted’s findings. He used Ørsted’s experiments and reports to prove, without a doubt, the integral connection between electricity and magnetism, giving the scientific community a whole new field to play around in (Get it? Field? Electric... field? No?)

From here, the science was boundless. Faraday, Coulomb, Maxwell, Hertz, Ohm, Planck, Tesla, Einstein, Henry, Dirac... all of these incredible researchers, and so many more, came to shape our understanding of the workings of electromagnetism. Even Benjamin Franklin got in on the deal; he’s the one that coined the terms ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ when describing charge (even though, technically, electrons flow from the negative side to the positive side, contradicting Franklin’s assumptions). It was their work that led us to better understand just how much this effect does for us. 

Really, though, what did you expect from a man who used that
many babies for a science experiment. 

Anything that you can think of, anything, is influenced in a big way by electromagnetism. The water that you drink is polarized. Any form of light that you sense is made of photons, which are essentially just little packs of electromagnetic energy. Things have form and shape because their electrical bonds dictate that they have form and shape. It’s really incredible to think about it, really. Here’s another example, if you weren’t informed enough: 

Every form of energy that you can think of can be condensed into this spectrum. Quantum mechanics lives off of this energy; these small particle-waves keep the micro-system alive. Without electromagnetism, quantum mechanics wouldn’t exist, which would both make science a lot more boring, and all life on earth cease to exist. 

But I know what you’re saying: enough with the hypotheticals! We’re scientists, we want real-life, and all that. Well, fortunately for us, electromagnetism will always be around. Why? Magnets are similar to the Force: they always seek balance. If a magnetized object has a north pole, then it automatically has a south pole connected to it. Even if you split a magnet in half, that magnet will become two separate south-north interactions. These separate magnets are called dipoles, and exist primarily on the atomic level. Monopoles, objects with a single north or a single south component, exist only in mathematics; theoretically, they could fit into several models of the universe, but that’s only because they fit into the right equations. But as many a scientist has found out, just because it works doesn’t mean it’s right. There has never been any evidence to support the existence of such a thing, and probably never will be. 

That’s right: believe it or not, even science has limitations. It's a sad thing.