The National MagLab is funded by the National Science Foundation and the State of Florida.
These demonstrations about laws and tools associated with electricity and magnetism allow you to adjust variables at and to visualize invisible forces — which makes them almost better than the real thing.
Seeing is believing. In these animations, we show you what electricity and magnetism might look like if they weren't invisible.
Learn about electricity and magnetism — and have some fun while you're at it!
How do Maglev trains work? What are comets made of? How do bugs walk on water? This section demonstrates these and other concepts related to magnetism, electricity and other areas of science.
Whether you prefer your science short & sweet or long & detailed, we spell it out for you here in easy-to-understand language.
Read fun science stories told in comic strip style.
There is beauty and art in science. Gaze on these stories of discoveries that could be featured on museum walls instead of scientific journals.
Explore these surprising, unconventional and sometimes downright strange stories about high magnetic field research.
These special science graphics explain science stories in digestible steps and include optional detours for readers wanting more background to customize your reading journey.
Get to know these pioneers who went down in history for their groundbreaking work, including scientists behind common terms such as Amp, Celsius, Kelvin, hertz and tesla.
From the world's first compass to the magnetic force microscope and beyond, explore a variety of instruments, tools and machines throughout history.
Our timeline takes you through the highlights of electricity and magnetism and across the centuries.
Take a field trip to these high magnetic field landmarks around the globe.
With his famous kite experiment and other forays into science, Benjamin Franklin advances knowledge of electricity, inspiring his English friend Joseph Priestley to do the same.
1750
John Michell, an English geologist, publishes A Treatise on Artificial Magnets, which describes how to make strong steel magnets and gives an account of his discovery of the inverse-square law for the attractive and repulsive forces of magnets.
Perh Vilhelm Margentin writes a letter to the Swedish Academy of Sciences in which he comments on the effect of the aurora borealis on a magnetized needle.
1751
Benjamin Franklin's letters to a colleague are published as Experiments and Observations on Electricity. The work includes Franklin’s views on positive and negative charges, the use of pointed conductors, improvements to the Leyden jar and a detailed plan for his famous kite experiment.
1752
The connection between lightning and electricity is proven when Benjamin Franklin’s plan to collect the charge from a storm cloud into a Leyden jar with a key attached to a kite is successfully completed.
1759
Franz Aepinus, a German natural philosopher, publishes his Tentamen Theoriae Electricitatis et Magnetismi (“An Attempt at a Theory of Electricity and Magnetism”), the first book to consider electricity and magnetism in terms of mathematics.
1762
Johann Sulzer, a Swiss physicist living in Berlin, conceives and carries out an experiment that involves placing two dissimilar metals in his mouth so that they touch one another, producing a strange sensation in the tongue. This was essentially the first tongue test of a battery, and was repeated by many other scientists, including Alessandro Volta.
1764
Swedish physicist Johannes Wilcke invents a simple apparatus for producing substantial amounts of electric charge, which would later come to be known as the electrophorus.
1767
Joseph Priestley, an English pastor and science enthusiast, deduces that the law of force between electric charges must be the same as Newton’s inverse-square law for gravitational force. His History and Present State of Electricity is released, in which all data available in the field at the time is reviewed.
1768
Johannes Wilcke compiles and publishes the first magnetic inclination chart that includes measurements from around the globe.
1769
Scottish inventor James Watt contrives the steam condensing engine, a design he improves over the next two decades. The machine is used late in the following century for large-scale electricity generation.
