What the heck is that thing?????? It turns out that today's Google Doodle honors the scientist who discovered EMF (although I believe people fight about who really discovered it, where, and when). PZ noted this here.
More like this
It's all over the news: elecrtomagnetic fields (EMFs) from cellular phones have been found to excite the brain close to where the phone is being held.
While other ScienceBlogs bloggers (notably Revere and Orac) post
Regular readers might be wondering why my output was—shall we say?—less extensive last week than it usually is. I even skipped a weekday and then followed it up with a recycled post from my not-so-super-secret other blog, altered to be a bit more, yes, Insolent.
As supporters of science-based medicine know, in the woo-sphere, there is only One True Cause of Autism, and that is vaccines. At least, so it would seem.
What's EMF? electromotive force? electromagnetic force? elk milk fondue?
Pretty much, yeah, and it's all linked by quantum mechanics. But they didn't know that then.
Any patriotic Dane knows that HC Ãrsted discovered electromagnetism. In fact many mornings I pass a memorial plaque placed on a house, in the center of Copenhagen (Nørregade), saying
"In a house on this spot, the physicist Hans Henrik Ãrsted discovered electro magnetism in the year 1820"
He was setting up an experiment to use as an educational tool for his students, when he noticed that placing a compass next to a live wire, made the compass needle move. This made him dismiss the class, and the next year he published his findings to all major places learning in Europe.