Introduction

Michael Faraday was no stranger to lightning bolt moments of inspiration. In 1821, he dangled a live wire into a cup filled with mercury and it rotated endlessly around the magnet. Electrical energy was being converted into mechanical energy using electromagnetic forces. And low, the electric motor was born. The next lightning bolt struck ten years later in 1831. This time Faraday wanted to reverse the process to see if a magnetic field could create an electric current. He began with an odd looking thing, an iron ring covered in cloth and wire that looked like something from, I don't know, an Egyptian tomb. But it proved that it was possible to create electricity from a magnetic field. We called