....¹

Any deviation from a uniform distribution would raise the electric potential energy and create a force tending to restore the uniform distribution.

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... understood.²

People were not even really convinced that the currents in Volta's cell were necessarily related to the static electric effects that they had known since the time of the Greeks!

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... field.³

Both of these claims are, of course, total nonsense.

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... pile.⁴

Ritter performed many experiments on the effects of electrical currents on the human body (his own) -- on the eyes, ears, the skin, and the tongue. He tested electrical currents on places where I would not dare! It may be no accident that he died at the age of 34.

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... directions.⁵

The first complete theoretical description of acoustic figures was offered some years later by the remarkable French mathematician Marie-Sophie Germain (1776-1831). Her story is a truly remarkable one -- I wish I had the time to tell you about her. Germain is best known for her work on Fermat's theorem. She proved that, if x, y, and z are integer solutions to the equation x⁵ + y⁵ = z⁵, then at least one of these numbers must be divisible by 5. This was the crucial step in proving Fermat's theorem -- which states that no integer solutions to this equation exist -- for n=5

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... carefully.⁶

He later said that this was because the effect was ``feeble''. This cannot have been the case given the power of his Voltaic cell. Rather, I think that he found the detailed nature of the effect to be unexpected and contrary to his intuition. Symmetry arguments predicting the qualitative nature of the effect are subtle. The notion of a pseudovector, which transforms like a vector under rotations but is invariant under reflections, was not introduced until the end of the century. Even the transformation of vectors under ordinary rotations was unknown until Rodriguez figured it out in 1840.

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... liquid.⁷

This method removes many -- but not all -- of the effects of the pressure on the containing vessel.

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... Christianity.⁸

The Sandemanians were a very fundamentalist sect who set great value on personal modesty and humility. Faraday was a modest fellow by all reports.

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... read⁹

As Faraday put it, ``There were books there, and I read them.''

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... Chemistry''¹⁰

A book about chemistry written by a woman for young ladies.

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... Britannica''¹¹

The topic of the movement to write encyclopedias, which began in France during the late 1700s and soon spread to Scotland and England, is itself a fascinating story.

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... machine¹²

The first really effective electrostatic machine was built by Coulomb. With it, he could produce fairly large static charges. Guess what he used them for.

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... strange.¹³

Some people claim that this was due to the influence of Kant's naturphilosophie. I think it more likely that Ørsted's lack of mathematics -- indicated by his inability to understand Ampére -- led him to describe his results in a confusing manner.

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... flux¹⁴

Either by changing the strength of the magnetic field or the orientation of the loop.

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... technology.¹⁵

Faraday was later asked about the usefulness of his discovery by England's Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel -- You know, the guy with the Bobbies. Faraday replied, ``I do not know, but I wager that one day you will put a tax on it.'' He was right!

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