Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by api 2174 days ago
A magnetic field can't do work by interacting with another generated field? If so how do electric motors work? I must be missing something here.
1 comments

Electric fields do the work there. A charged particle in a magnetic field feels a force (Lorenz force) that act perpendicularly to its velocity. But work is only work if the force is applied in the direction of its velocity. Essentially it's changing its direction of momentum, but not its magnitude.

On the other hand, some magnetic fields (not all) can be transformed into electric fields by a change of reference frame. In that case, the electric field can be used to do work. But I don't believe that's possible on these scales.

I want to know things like this. Any recommendations for books or lectures?
Any undergraduate level textbook on E&M. Griffith's 'Introduction to Electrodynamics' is a commonly used one.
ViaScience has some very good lectures on physics. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCx6G76LCKLdd7__F0xt5POQ