Maxwell was a physicist who lived in the last century. He was particularly
interested in how electricity and magnetism worked. One of his major
accomplishments was providing the mathematical equations that describe how
these two separate natural phenomena work together to make light and radio
waves. The equations he discovered allowed other scientists to understand
several facts about light:
light is made of electric and magnetic
fields that change very, very rapidly
as the electric field in a light wave
changes, it changes the magnetic field; as the magnetic
field changes, it changes the electric field; both fields
work together to make up the light wave
if we know the electric and magnetic
properties of space, we can calculate the speed of light
