Experiment: Checking Biot-Savart's Law

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around how to experimentally verify Biot-Savart's Law, focusing on its application and limitations in practical scenarios. Participants explore the historical context and the nature of the law itself, as well as the feasibility of conducting such experiments.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory, Technical explanation, Debate/contested, Experimental/applied

Main Points Raised

  • One participant questions the validity of Biot-Savart's Law for 'thin' wires and whether commonly used wires are adequate for testing its validity.
  • Another suggests measuring the magnetic field strength to see if it aligns with theoretical predictions, noting that Biot-Savart's Law is phenomenological and derived from experimental observations.
  • A participant mentions that the differential form of Biot-Savart's Law cannot be directly tested, only inferred from the integral form, which has been confirmed in specific cases but not proven universally.
  • There is a request for information on the experiments that support Biot-Savart's Law, emphasizing a desire for experimental context rather than a formal proof.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express differing views on the applicability of Biot-Savart's Law and the nature of its experimental verification. There is no consensus on the best approach to experimentally check the law or its limitations.

Contextual Notes

Participants highlight the limitations of testing the differential form of the law and the dependency on specific experimental setups. There is also an acknowledgment of the historical context in which Biot-Savart's Law was developed.

Who May Find This Useful

This discussion may be useful for students and educators in physics, particularly those interested in experimental methods and the historical development of electromagnetic theories.

pardesi
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how does one experimentally check biot-savart's law
 
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Maybe you could time travel back to the early 19th century when people actually cared?

Or you could enroll in a freshman physics laboratory class where no one cares about anything.
 
no isn't it imp...
well why i asked is it holds only for 'thin' wires and are the wires which we normally use sufficient to test it's validity
 
Why can't you just measure the magnetic field strength and see if it matches the theoretical calculations at that particular position?

Besides, like Coulomb's Law, isn't B-S law a phenomenological law historically? So it CAME out of experimental observations in the first place.

Zz.
 
pardesi said:
how does one experimentally check biot-savart's law
The differential form of the B-S law cannot be tested, but can only be inferred from the integral form. The integral form was first written down by Laplace, based on the experiments of B and S with closed circuits. Because of its general nature, it can only be confirmed for specific cases (always passing so far) but not "proven" in general.
 
thanks for that i just wanted to see the experiments behind it ...
and ofcourse not a 'proof'
 

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