You know that feeling when you open up a highly
technical scientific paper and you are immediately
confronted with this massive wall of complex
mathematical equations? Oh, yeah. It's an incredibly
intimidating barrier. Right. It's like staring
at an alien language. You see the dense trigonometry,
the advanced calculus, and there's this immediate
sinking feeling of, well, I guess I'm just not
mathematically fluent enough to understand how
the universe actually works. Exactly. We have
this culturally ingrained idea that true profound
insight into the laws of nature strictly requires
you to speak the language of advanced mathematics.
Like it's the only valid password. Yeah, we view
math as the only way to get past the gatekeepers
of modern science. But what if the person who
essentially invented the modern electric age?
the person responsible for the fact that you
can plug a computer into a wall or drive an electric
car or even listen to this audio right now. What
if he barely knew any math at all? It's kind
of wild to think about. His mathematical abilities
literally stopped at basic algebra. Which completely
shatters that whole gatekeeping myth right there.
It really does. So today's deep dive into the
source material is a comprehensive look at the
life and science of Michael Faraday. We are pulling
from a massive stack of historical biographies,
his personal letters, and 19th century records
from the Royal Institution. There's a lot of
great material there. There is. And our mission
today is to uncover how a poor, self -educated
bookbinder's apprentice managed to visualize
his way into discovering electromagnetic induction,
inventing the electric motor, and basically fundamentally
rewiring human civilization. No small feat. Not
at all. And more importantly, we want to look
at why his deeply visual, tactile way of engaging
with the world holds the ultimate lesson for
you, especially if you ever feel overwhelmed
by complex information today. What's really fascinating
here is that we aren't just looking at a list
of inventions. I mean, we are looking at a fundamentally
different way of thinking. Right. His profound
lack of a traditional elite education actually
became his greatest superpower. He simply wasn't
constrained by the rigid, purely abstract ways
the scientific establishment of the 19th century
was was taught to approach physics. OK, let's
unpack this because Faraday's origin story is
basically the ultimate 19th century DIY education.
It really is. We start in London, 1791. Ferdy
is born into a very poor family. His father is
a village blacksmith, and they belong to this
strict, dissenting Christian sect called the
Glicites, or Sandamanians. Right. Faraday gets
the absolute bare bones basic schooling, just
reading, writing, a tiny bit of math. And by
age 14, he is forced to enter the workforce as
an apprentice to a local book binder named George
Rebell. And that specific manual labor is the
catalyst for everything that follows. Because
as a book binder, Faraday isn't just physically
stitching the leather and a paper together. He's
actually reading them. Exactly. He is devouring
the contents of those pages. Knowledge wasn't
this abstract lecture handed down by an aristocratic
professor. For him, knowledge was a physical
object he was literally building with his own
hands. He takes two books in particular to heart.
One is Isaac Watts's The Improvement of the Mind,
which he basically treats as a rigorous operational
manual for his own brain. A great way to put
it. And the other is Conversations on Chemistry.
by Jean Marseille. And he doesn't just read Marseille's
book. He starts physically recreating her chemistry
experiments right there in the back room of the
bookshop. Because to Faraday, if you couldn't
demonstrate something physically, if you couldn't
manipulate it with your own hands, you didn't
actually understand it. Yeah. That tactile requirement
becomes the bedrock of his entire scientific
method. And it sets the stage perfectly for his
entry into the formal scientific world in 1812.
Right. So he's 20 years old, his apprenticeship
is ending, and a customer gives him tickets to
attend a series of lectures by the eminent chemist
Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution. Davey
is the absolute rock star scientist of London
at this time. He really is. So Faraday sits in
the audience and takes incredibly meticulous
notes on Davey's chemical demonstrations. He
then takes those notes. uses his professional
skills to bind them into a gorgeous 300 -page
leather book and ships it directly to Humphrey
Davy. I love that. It's this brilliant, tangible
portfolio. And it proves to Davy that this young
man has an unparalleled capacity for practical
observation, which pays off shortly after, when
Davy manages to temporarily blind himself in
a laboratory explosion. Oh, wow. Yeah, he was
working with a highly volatile chemical called
nitrogen trichloride. Naturally. Right. he desperately
needs a capable assistant, he remembers the young
bookbinder and hires Faraday in 1813. Where they
promptly get injured in another nitrogen trichloride
explosion together. Exactly, 19th century chemistry
was, it was not for the faint of heart. Definitely
not. You know, looking at this entry into the
scientific elite, Parmy thinks his lack of formal
credentials actually gave him an advantage. How
so? Well today, an algorithmic resume scanner
would reject Michael Faraday in a microsecond
because he didn't have a bachelor's degree. But
back then, the lack of bureaucratic HR departments
meant Davey could just hire raw Unpolished talent.
Yeah, if we connect this to the bigger picture,
the lack of formal gates was crucial. But it
only worked because science was still transitioning
from a wealthy gentleman's hobby into a, you
know, a professional discipline. Right. Davey
didn't need a theoretician. He needed someone
who could keep the glassware from exploding.
Faraday's mind was shaped by surviving and manipulating
those practical engagements. That practical engagement
leads directly to the spark of invention. And
also to a massive professional crisis. Fast forward
to 1821. A huge year. Hans Christian Ersted has
just published his groundbreaking discovery that
an electric current moving through a wire causes
a nearby compass needle to deflect. The electromagnetic
link is proven, and every top physicist in Europe
is scrambling to figure out how to harness it.
At the Royal Institution. Humphrey Davy and William
Hyde Wollaston are desperately trying to build
a machine that uses this new electromagnetic
force to create continuous motion. And they fail
entirely. Completely. They are trapped in older
paradigms of physics and just can't conceptualize
how to make the forces interact continuously.
But Faraday, who is now a rising star in the
lab, takes a crack at it and he actually figures
it out. He invents the homopolar motor. The physical
setup of which is brilliantly strange. It really
is. He creates a pool of liquid mercury, which
acts as an electrical conductor. He places a
permanent magnet standing upright in the center
of the mercury. Then he hangs a wire from above,
so it just dangles into the liquid pool. And
here is where we need to look at the actual physics,
rather than just treating it like a magic trick.
Yeah, please. When Faraday connects a battery,
the current flows down the dangling wire into
the mercury and back to the battery. But as those
electrons travel down the wire, they are passing
through the magnetic field generated by that
upright permanent magnet. And those two forces
physically interact. Precisely. It's what physicists
now call the Lorentz force. When an electric
current moves perpendicular to a magnetic field,
it doesn't just pass through passively. It gets
pushed. Right? It experiences a physical force
that pushes it sideways, perpendicular to both
the magnetic field and the current itself, so
the wire gets shoved sideways. But because the
magnetic field is radiating outward in all directions
from that central circular magnet, that sideways
push becomes a continuous circular motion. The
wire just keeps sweeping around the magnet as
long as the current flows. It's like a carnival
ride for electrons. Exactly. It is the first
time in human history that electrical energy
is converted into continuous mechanical motion.
It's the conceptual ancestor of every electric
motor on earth. A massive breakthrough. Massive.
And Faraday is so incredibly thrilled by this
breakthrough that he immediately publishes his
results. But he completely forgets to credit
Humphrey Davy or William Wollstone for their
preliminary discussions and work in the lab.
And the blowback is immediate and severe. Davy
feels deeply slighted. Understandably. The resulting
controversy poisons his relationship with his
mentor. The institutional jealousy of the era
kicks in, and the consequence is that Faraday
is effectively sidelined. He is quietly steered
away from researching electromagnetism for the
next decade. OK, looking at his actions here,
I have to say it's hard not to see Faraday as
a bit of a glory hound. I mean, he publishes
the biggest physics breakthrough of the century
and conveniently forgets to mention the senior
scientists who gave him the lab space and the
initial theories. Yeah. Wait, was Faraday acting
like an arrogant tech bro stealing the spotlight
or was this just a classic naive mistake? by
an overeager junior employee. It's easy to see
it that way from a modern perspective, but the
historical context suggests it was genuinely
a naive mistake. Remember his background. Right,
the bookbinder. Exactly. He didn't come through
Oxford or Cambridge. He didn't learn the delicate,
highly political etiquette of the scientific
aristocracy. He sought a profound physical truth
in the laboratory. And his unrefined instinct
was simply to share it with the world. You just
wanted to get it out there. Right. But this exile
from electricity, while personally devastating,
it actually forces a pivot that becomes his greatest
advantage. Because he spends the 1820s diving
intensely into chemistry. And he isn't just messing
around. He utterly dominates the field. He really
does. But he's not just making a list of discoveries.
He's fundamentally training his brain. Take his
work on liquefying gases. He takes chlorine gas,
traps it in a sealed, bent glass tube, and applies
heat to one end while cooling the other. He watches
the pressure build until this invisible gas physically
condenses into a yellow liquid. And that specific
physical manipulation is crucial. By forcing
gases into liquids, he is training himself to
understand that invisible phenomena have profound
physical reality. That is so key. It really is.
He is building the exact mental framework he
will need to visualize invisible magnetic fields
later on. During this time, he also works with
the polymath William Wewell to create the very
language of electrochemistry. They literally
invent words we use daily. Anode, cathode, electrode,
ion. Yep. So by 1831, Humphry Davy has passed
away, the political heat has cooled, and Faraday
is finally free to return to electromagnetism.
And he returns with a mind uniquely trained to
see the physical structure of invisible things.
which leads to his absolute magnum opus. Electromagnetic
induction. Yes. Aristot had proved that electricity
could create magnetism. Faraday wanted to know
if the reverse was true. Can magnetism create
electricity? Here's where it gets really interesting.
He builds a deceptively simple apparatus. He
takes a solid iron ring and wraps two separate
insulated coils of wire around opposite sides
of it. Okay. Coil A is attached to a battery.
Coil B is attached to a meter to measure current.
The coils are not touching. The only connection
is the iron ring. It's basically the grandfather
of the modern wireless phone charger. Exactly.
Now, conditional logic at the time dictated that
if you turn the battery on for coil A, a magnetic
field would be created, and that constant magnetic
field should just push electricity through coil
B. But it doesn't. No. When the current is steady,
coil B registers absolutely nothing. But Faraday
catches the one detail everyone else missed.
He notices the moment of transition. The split
second. Yes. When he first hooks up the battery,
the needle on coil B jumps for just a split second,
then drops to zero. When he disconnects the battery,
the needle jumps again in the opposite direction.
Because it isn't the mere presence of a magnetic
field that creates electricity, it is the change
in the magnetic field. Right. When the battery
is turned on, the magnetic field expands outward.
As those invisible lines of magnetic force expand,
they physically sweep across the wire of coil
B. That moving magnetic tension physically shoves
the electrons in the wire, creating a current.
And then when it turns off... When the battery
is turned off, the magnetic field collapses,
sweeping back across the wire in the other direction,
pushing the electrons the opposite way. So a
moving magnet induces an electric current. From
this single realization, he builds the Faraday
disk, which is the world's first electric generator.
But what fascinates me is how he processed this
without math. Most scientists were trying to
explain these forces using complex Newtonian
equations, treating electricity like fluids acting
at a distance. Yeah, and Faraday literally couldn't
do the calculus. So he had to visualize it geometrically.
If you've ever sprinkled iron filings around
a bar magnet and watched them snap into those
sweeping curved geometric patterns, you are seeing
what Faraday saw in his mind's eye. He envisioned
the empty space around magnets and wires as being
filled with invisible physical lines of tension.
He called them lines of force. Like a comic book
artist mapping a universe. He thought of them
like rubber bands stretching and contracting
through space. When a wire physically cuts across
these rubber bands, it creates an electrical
current. It's a brilliantly tangible metaphor.
And decades later, the brilliant physicist James
Clerk Maxwell takes Faraday's visual concept
of these lines of force and translates them into
the complex mathematical equations that form
the bedrock of all modern electromagnetic theory.
Maxwell actually did the math. He did. And Maxwell
explicitly stated that Faraday's visual method
proved he was a mathematician of a very order.
He just used spatial geometry in his mind instead
of symbols on a chalkboard. That spatial geometry
leads Faraday to an even deeper obsession, which
is unifying the forces of nature. Because in
1832, people still thought there were different
flavors of electricity. Right. You had static
electricity from rubbing glass, animal electricity
from torpedo fish, and voltaic electricity from
batteries. But Faraday runs exhausting experiments
to prove they are all exactly the same fundamental
force, just varying in quantity and intensity.
He is relentlessly collapsing the boundaries
between disciplines. And to prove his theories,
he executes some of the most spectacular theatrical
experiments in scientific history. We absolutely
have to talk about the cage experiment of 1836.
Oh this is a classic. He wants to prove a point
about how static electricity behaves on conductors.
So he built a massive 12 foot square wooden room
inside the Royal Institution. Right there inside.
Right. He wraps the entire structure in wire
mesh and paper. Then he electrifies the outside
of it with massive static charges. Sparks are
literally flying off this giant cube. And then
he just casually steps inside it. The birth of
the Faraday cage. Stepping into a 12 -foot electrified
cage requires an unbreakable, almost terrifying
level of faith in your own hypothesis. Yeah.
I mean, what kind of psychological courage does
that take? It requires the faith of someone who
intuitively understands the physical mechanics.
of the invisible. Yeah. He knew that the electrical
charge would reside entirely on the exterior
conducting surface. Why? Because the electrons
on the wire mesh repel each other. They push
as far away from each other as physically possible,
which is the extreme outer surface of the cage.
As they distribute around that exterior, they
create an internal electric field that perfectly
cancels out the external one. So the inside is
completely shielded. Exactly. It's the exact
same physics that keeps you safe inside a metal
airplane when it gets struck by lightning. He
is proving that electricity is a physical force
interacting with matter, not some magical fluid.
And he just keeps pushing this unified theory.
In 1845, using a piece of heavy glass he had
manufactured years earlier during his chemistry
exile, he discovers diamagnetism. Which is another
phenomenon that requires us to look at the mechanism.
When Faraday applied a strong magnetic field
to this glass, it didn't attract. It weakly repelled
away from the magnet. When he discovered, though
he didn't have the modern atomic models to fully
articulate it, was that the applied magnetic
field was slightly altering the orbital motion
of the electrons inside the glass's atoms. That
microscopic shift in momentum generated a tiny
opposing magnetic field causing the physical
repulsion. He then passes a beam of polarized
light through that exact same glass, turns on
the electromagnet, and watches the orientation
of the light literally twist. It's amazing! He
writes in his notebook, I have at last succeeded
in magnetizing a ray of light. He proves electromagnetism
and light are fundamentally connected. This raises
an important question, though, about how scientific
visionaries are treated in their own time. What
do you mean? Well, when Faraday proposed that
these electromagnetic forces extended out into
empty space, what we now call field theory, he
was openly mocked by many of his highly educated
peers. Really? They mocked him? Oh, yeah. They
thought the idea of invisible forces acting through
the vacuum of space was absurd. It actually took
50 years, long after his death, for his field
theories to be fully weaponized by technology
when the Savoy Theatre in London was lit entirely
by incandescent bulbs powered by his generator
concepts. That is wild. Which brings us to the
ethics of the man himself. Because we have to
look at how Faraday handled the immense world
-altering power of these discoveries. He practically
handed human civilization the keys to unlimited
energy. He could have been the wealthiest man
of the 19th century. Easily. But he was driven
by his devout Sandamanian Christian faith, which
instilled a profound sense of humility and a
deep suspicion of worldly accumulation. He lived
a life of astonishing modesty. Yeah, he turned
down a knighthood, stating he preferred to remain
plain Mr. Faraday to the end. He twice refused
to become the president of the Royal Society,
and he declined an offer to be buried in Westminster
Abbey. He really walked the walk. He also directed
his scientific rigor toward profound public service.
He worked extensively on optimizing the lenses
and lighthouses to save sailors' lives. And in
1846, he investigated the horrific Haswell colliery
explosion. That was a tragic event. It was. Through
meticulous forensic chemistry, he proved for
the very first time that airborne coal dust was
a highly combustible fatal factor in mine explosions,
not just the methane gas. He detailed exactly
how proper ventilation could prevent future tragedies.
Tragically, the mining industry largely ignored
his coal dust warnings for another 60 years.
Yeah. His ethical boundaries were completely
unyielding, too. During the Crimean War, the
British government approached Faraday to advise
on the development of chemical weapons for the
battlefield. Given his unmatched expertise in
isolating and liquefying toxic gases like chlorine,
he was the obvious choice. But he flatly refused
to participate, citing his strict moral reservations.
He simply would not allow his understanding of
nature to be used to kill. A powerful stance.
Looking at his refusal to monetize his genius,
he wrote in a letter, I have always loved science
more than money, and because my occupation is
almost entirely personal, I cannot afford to
get rich. Part of me thinks it's a beautiful,
pure sentiment. But honestly, another part of
me thinks it was a massive missed opportunity.
In our modern world of venture capital and patent
wars, is Faraday's refusal to monetize his genius
deeply inspiring or a little naive. If he had
patented the electric motor or the generator,
he could have funded his own state -of -the -art
laboratory indefinitely, rather than constantly
relying on grants and the royal institution's
budget. It's a pragmatic argument for sure, but
it fundamentally conflicts with his core worldview.
To Faraday, knowledge was unequivocally a public
good. Uncovering the laws of physics was an exploration
of creation, not a commodity to be hoarded or
locked behind patents. That makes sense. That
ethos of public accessibility is exactly why
he poured massive amounts of energy into public
education. He founded the Friday evening discourses
and the famous Christmas lectures for young people
at the Royal Institution. Which are still going
on today. Yeah. And he demanded that science
be presented with live, tangible experiments,
not dry academic readings. He wanted to spark
wonder, literally urging his audiences, think
of that, and philosophize. So what does this
all mean for you listening right now? Faraday's
life is a master class in the sheer power of
curiosity over credentialism. Absolutely. If
you are ever feeling intimidated by the dense
jargon or the complex mathematics or the institutional
gatekeeping in your own learning journey, remember
the poor bookbinder's apprentice. He didn't let
the fact that he couldn't read the math stop
him from reading the physical universe. He visualized
his way into inventing the modern world. And
the power of that visualization leaves us with
one final deeply profound story from the sources
to consider. Toward the very end of his life
in 1862, Faraday's intuition was still driving
him. He set up an experiment using a spectroscope
to see if a strong magnetic field could alter
the spectral lines of emitted light. He ran the
experiment, but he saw absolutely no change.
His glass lenses and prisms simply weren't sensitive
enough to detect the minute shift. He failed.
But his intuition wasn't wrong. Not at all. 35
years later, in 1897, a Dutch physicist named
Peter Zeeman used vastly superior modern optical
tools to run the exact same experiment Faraday
had attempted. The exact same one. Zeeman proved
that Faraday's intuition was flawlessly accurate.
The magnetic field did alter the light spectrum.
Zeeman won the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics for
this discovery, and in his acceptance speech,
he specifically credited Michael Faraday's final
failed experiment. He knew the physical The truth
was there. Human engineering just hadn't built
the lenses to let him see it yet. Exactly. Which
really leaves you with a profound question to
chew on. What fundamental truths are we already
guessing correctly today, simply waiting for
the technology of tomorrow to prove us right?
When you look out at the complexity of the world,
are you letting the equations intimidate you,
or are you trying to see the invisible lines
of force connecting it all together?