Chapter 548: Magnetic Effect of Electric Current
Thales felt a surge of emotions. After being silent for a while and organizing his thoughts, he said:
“Lord Ace said earlier that he was just a lucky person who picked up a few pearls in the ocean of truth. This is truly too modest. My discovery lies in the direction of electricity, and I am the truly lucky one. If Lord Ace hadn’t created the Magic Net, I wouldn’t even have the qualification to come into contact with magic.
“If it weren’t for the open and rich academic atmosphere of Academic City, I couldn’t possibly have progressed so fast. If it weren’t for the prerequisite research of many wizards, I couldn’t possibly have made today’s discovery.
“Before talking about this discovery, I need to thank Lord Ace. He initiated magic, and he created the Magic Net.
“I also want to thank Teacher Warren. He enlightened me, giving me basic academic literacy and the courage to try.
“I also want to thank Wisdom of Spells for giving me a place to publish papers, and even more so, I want to thank Wizards Allen, Leyden, and Bruce. Their research gave me great inspiration and help.
“Standing on the shoulders of giants, I discovered this secret: The interaction force between two stationary point charges in a vacuum is directly proportional to the product of their charge quantities, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. The direction of the force is along the line connecting them. Like charges repel, and opposite charges attract.
“I call this the Law of Electrostatic Interaction. If expressed by a formula, it is: [****].”
The wizards listened quietly, the heavy stones in their hearts lifted. Although they weren’t quite clear on how this formula was derived, there was no doubt that the Great Source had acknowledged it, and Ace had acknowledged it. As long as they saw the specific paper, they could conduct replication experiments themselves.
Moreover, how perfect was this result! Such a formula structure was almost identical to the formula for the Law of Universal Gravitation derived from magical mechanics. This almost proclaimed that the domain of electrostatic interaction was still ruled by magical mechanics.
For the wizards, this meant there was no risk of their heads exploding, and their moods became exceptionally smooth. An electrostatic interaction force that conformed to magical mechanics was simply perfect.
Thales continued: “Here, I need to define a few concepts related to electricity. These concepts were not all originally created by me; some are quoted from the achievements of His Excellency Allen and His Excellency Leyden. I hope the two Excellencies will permit.”
Allen and Leyden stood up one after another. Leyden and Allen exchanged a glance and said: “We have had spiritual resonance with Thales for a long time, drawing on each other’s thinking and repeating experiments. Our respective researches intersect. Being able to be quoted is also an honor for the two of us.”
Allen didn’t speak, just nodded along.
Seeing that the two agreed, Thales said loudly: “Synthesizing the research achievements of myself, His Excellency Allen, and His Excellency Leyden, I believe that regarding electricity, these few concepts must be understood, and they are also the foundation of research.
“They are electric charge, current, voltage, and resistance. Among them, electric charge is further divided into positive charge and negative charge…”
Thales’s viewpoints were not complex, but they clearly depicted various concepts regarding electricity. And the extremely ingenious electrostatic torsion balance experiment that followed made everyone certain of the action at a distance of electricity. The glass bottle invented by Leyden was also called the Leyden Jar by people. Wizards became more and more interested in electricity.
The next day, Thales’s paper was published in the latest issue of Magic. The supplement of this issue of Magic was very short, but these few short pages opened up a great domain concerning electromagnetism. Wizards eagerly discussed the newly emerging electromagnetism, celebrating the victory of magical mechanics.
Ace watched all this quietly, a mysterious smile appearing at the corner of his mouth.
The Legendary Wizards all followed Ace and left the Celestial Realm. They still had a bug as huge as a world to study. The extraction work of the pseudo-world inside the belly of the World-Devouring Bug had already begun, and Ace’s research on the tail propulsion structure had also reached the final stage.
Inside the world, the Academic Committee finally recommended that Thales name his discovery the Thales’s Law of Charge Attraction. The originally niche domain of electromagnetism became the darling of wizards’ research overnight. Countless wizards conducted replication experiments, and electrical laboratories were established one after another.
Thales also moved into Warren’s Wizard Tower and was granted permission to use Warren’s Legendary Wizard laboratory. All experimental results were enjoyed by himself. Thales also gave back to his teacher, believing his corresponding author should be Warren.
In Bruce’s personal laboratory, he was designing something related to electricity.
As an elemental wizard, a Fire Wizard specializing in combustion, Bruce suddenly developed a strong interest in electricity. He said to Eva and Allen:
“The Leyden Jar can indeed store electricity, but how to obtain electricity more conveniently so that everyone has the opportunity to conduct electrical experiments is a problem.”
Allen nodded and said: “If we can obtain electricity more conveniently, then many wizard apprentices and even ordinary people can conduct electrical experiments. Moreover, this has a major significance: we can promote the wizards’ knowledge system to ordinary people, making them share the same knowledge and value systems as us.”
Eva also said: “This is a great idea. Perhaps we can go to the Blood Origin Planet to conduct a social experiment. In the past, we only thought about wizards doing experiments themselves. Only now do we suddenly realize that not only wizards, but Mages can too. Then why can’t ordinary people?”
The three exchanged ideas. Eventually, Eva set off for the Blood Origin Planet first, while Bruce continued with his design.
About a month later, Bruce designed a very convenient tool—the Electrophorus.
The entire Electrophorus consisted of an insulating plate and a conductive disk with an insulating handle.
First, rub the insulating plate to give it an electric charge, either positive or negative.
Gently place the conductive disk on the insulating plate. Due to electrostatic induction, the top of the conductive disk carries a positive charge, and the bottom carries a negative charge.
Touch the top of the conductive disk to the ground; the conductive disk will be left with only one type of charge.
Separate the conductive disk from the insulating plate, and you get a charged capacitor.
This invention was simple and effective. Bruce published this paper directly in the electrical base camp Wisdom of Spells, quickly arousing widespread praise. This greatly lowered the threshold for electrical research, and Bruce’s electrical laboratory also rose to fame.
On this day, Bruce’s assistant had just killed a Delicious Frog, preparing to cook magical gourmet food for Bruce. He placed the frog on the table. When the knife and fork touched the frog’s leg, the frog’s leg actually twitched and spasmed as if a corpse had come alive. At the same time, electrical sparks appeared.
This scene caught Bruce’s attention. He was tuning the electrical machine and thought it might be interference from the electrical machine. But after turning off the electrical machine, the frog remained the same.
“What exactly is the reason?”
Looking at the lightning, thunder, and pouring rain outside the house, Bruce’s small eyes brightened. He thought it might be caused by lightning discharging through the air.
So he didn’t eat this already dead Delicious Frog. Instead, he used a copper hook to hook the frog and hung it on the iron fence outside the laboratory. The frog twitched even more violently, and would even occasionally “resurrect” on clear days.
This left Blue extremely puzzled. Like possessed, he circled around the frog, whispering: “Where does the electricity come from?”
Bruce switched to very ordinary frogs, and it was still the same, ruling out mana interference. What exactly was the reason?
Just then, Eva contacted him. She had already made preparations on the Blood Origin Planet and had also persuaded his old lover, Grand Duchess Elena.
Bruce’s face looked somewhat embarrassed. Ever since Elena advanced to Legend, he felt somewhat inadequate. Later, he simply hid in the Celestial Realm to do academics. Anyway, to consolidate her power, Elena couldn’t possibly come to the Celestial Realm within a hundred years.
However, the experiment indeed made no progress. Perhaps going to the Blood Origin Planet to relax wasn’t a bad idea.
Holding this mood, Blue descended to the Blood Origin Planet in reverse through the Magic Net system.
As soon as he arrived on the Blood Origin Planet, his brain was still buzzing. Standing on the teleportation platform trying to adapt, Bruce heard a group of people around shouting loudly: “Respected Husband of the Grand Duchess, welcome back!”
Bruce’s face turned pale. Did this Elena want to squeeze him dry? His legs actually went a bit weak.
Arriving at the capital in a daze, Allen and Eva had long been waiting there. Bruce was surprised to find that Luther had also come. He hugged Luther excitedly and said: “You kid haven’t had news for so long, how are things?”
Luther said with a slightly dim expression: “Failed in competing to be the planet’s ruler and was hunted down by the opponent across the entire planet. Just escaped to Academic City a few days ago. Hearing you guys came to the Blood Origin Planet, I came here to seek refuge with you big brothers and sisters.”
Blue laughed heartily: “Don’t mind it too much. Becoming a planet ruler doesn’t mean you can immediately advance to Legend either. Except for Her Excellency Daina, the others only become pseudo-status Legends within the planetary scope first. To stabilize their strength, they must stay on the planet for a hundred years to digest the planet’s Source Power. We should still take the traditional way of wizards: discover new theories, obtain Great Source feedback. If it really doesn’t work out, we’ll go astral scavenging.”
Allen also said: “Let’s go. Elena is waiting for you.”
Hearing this, Bruce’s face turned pale, and his legs went weak. Supported by the crowd, he was pushed to Elena’s bedchamber.
Three days later, Bruce walked out with unsteady footsteps. Elena signed a Grand Ducal Decree, allocating an entire subcontinent within the planet and a population of one million to them for social experiments.
Imitating the structure of the Magic Council, the group established the Council of Scholars. The entire subcontinent began the era of Scholar Rule, vigorously promoting comprehensive compulsory education and sharing magical knowledge with mortals. Eva proposed a slogan.
“Build a nation where mortals can also use magical power.”
In this world possessing the Magic Net, as long as mortals could manufacture devices themselves to link to the Magic Net to draw mana, it was indeed possible to build such a nation. Of course, this wasn’t an overnight endeavor.
Bruce originally came to relax. After handing over his “public grain,” he was no longer willing to go to the planetary capital. Instead, he wandered around everywhere.
He traveled along the seaside of the subcontinent, chatted with fishermen, looked at the boundless sea, and his heart gradually became much more cheerful.
Several fishermen were pulling a net. He only heard them say: “Be careful. This is a fish that can discharge electricity. Don’t get shocked.”
Hearing this, Bruce thought: Electricity?
He hurriedly ran over, chatted with the fishermen for a few words, and finally bought this entire net of fish for two gold coins. After observation, Blue found that these fish, called electric eels, could indeed discharge electricity, and this kind of fish was not a magical creature.
“The electric eel can generate electricity, but it’s not electricity converted through mana and rune structures. It can discharge electricity itself. Is this electricity the same as other electricity?”
Thinking of the problem, Bruce immediately returned to the capital of the subcontinent and began experimenting in the laboratory. Finally, he successfully charged a Leyden Jar with an electric eel, confirming that these electricities were the same thing.
Without hesitation, Blue bid farewell to everyone, ascended to the Celestial Realm through the Magic Net, and returned to his laboratory in Academic City.
He had his assistant catch a few frogs and kill them. He used a copper hook and an iron hook to hook the frog, and the frog moved. When he replaced the metal hooks with stone, resin, and glass, the frog couldn’t move. After conducting similar experiments with other ordinary animals, Bruce returned to the study.
He wrote on the magic paper Animal Electricity Experiments. At the end of the article, he wrote: “Metal has conductivity. We can consider the animal body as a natural Leyden Jar, and animal electricity is stored within the animal body.”
This paper was quickly registered and filed through the Academic Tower’s paper system, and was distributed to Leyden, the chief editor of Wisdom of Spells.
Leyden was painting something in his study. A Shadow Crow flapped its wings slap, slap against the window. Leyden looked up, snapped his fingers. Mana fluctuated slightly, and the window opened naturally.
The Shadow Crow hopped in and opened its mouth wide. Leyden reached in, pulled out a scroll, and stuffed a small piece of magic stone into the crow’s beak.
The crow smacked its beak a few times, swallowed the magic stone, flapped its wings, and flew out.
He put on his metal-laced glass spectacles and slowly opened the scroll. “Animal Electricity?”
Without hesitation, Leyden conducted a replication experiment. He placed two coins, a copper coin and a gold coin, on the upper and lower sides of his tongue and felt a somewhat numbing and astringent sensation. But when the coins were the same kind of metal, a strange thing happened: the sensation on the tongue was much smaller than with non-identical metals.
Thus, he also began to experiment with frogs, and the result was still the same.
When the metals in his hands were identical, the twitching of the frog leg muscles was not obvious. If changed to different metals, the frog leg twitched much more severely.
Leyden couldn’t help saying: “If the frog is just a Leyden Jar, how could the difference be so huge?”
He generated doubts about the concept of animal electricity. The new issue of Wisdom of Spells was about to be released. Leyden published his own experiment together with Bruce’s experiment and attached his own judgment.
“Electricity does not originate from the animal body, but from the metal in the hands. The essence of the electric current is generated by metal contact, having nothing to do with animals.”
Seeing the latest issue of Wisdom of Spells, Bruce immediately sent a letter to refute. This assertion was somewhat unreliable because it couldn’t explain why the frog leg still twitched with the same kind of metal.
Leyden replied in his letter, believing this was because the metal was impure and contained impurities.
To prove his viewpoint, Leyden further purified metals, tested different kinds of metals, and began a lengthy series of experiments.
…
At this moment, outside the world, wizards such as Ace had successfully dissected the World-Devouring Bug. Ace had completely analyzed all the structures and rune structures of the giant bug’s tail propulsion organ and head devouring organ.
The Legendary Wizards had also completely stripped away that empty-shell pseudo-world. Magic Net threads intertwined, fixing the pseudo-world, making it the largest satellite world.
“How should we utilize this pseudo-world?”
Everyone was somewhat at a loss. This pseudo-world was full of death energy and mummies, and lacked origin; there was simply no way to develop it.
Ace was also pondering hard. He suddenly thought of the Tree of Life he brought from the Kaya World. That was a miraculous tree capable of converting negative energy into vitality energy and forming a self-contained system. Perhaps it could be used.
Ace immediately summoned the Tree of Life. It was still emerald green, lingering with vitality energy. Ace mobilized the Controller privilege, branded his mark on this tree, and repeatedly washed it with world Source Power. The other wizards also observed quietly.
After about a month, the alien world aura of that tree completely disappeared. The tips of the branches swayed slightly, seemingly being intimate with everyone.
Ace said to the crowd: “This kind of tree suddenly appeared in large numbers in the Reflection World of the Kaya World. I think it should be a derivative of that sky-blotting World Tree from the Giant Tree World. It has the miraculous effect of converting life and death and converting energy. Moreover, intelligent species gestate on it. I have completely cleansed and upgraded the origin of this tree. It is now an authentic Legendary Treasure Tree, a Treasure Tree of the Wizard World. We plant it in the pseudo-world; perhaps there will be unbelievable changes in the future.”
Of course, the Legendary Wizards had no objections. They had no better suggestions either, naturally following Ace’s method first.
Ace entered the pseudo-world along the Magic Net tunnel and planted the Tree of Life right in the middle of the world. That tree grew against the wind, growing from tens of meters to nearly a thousand meters in almost an instant before slowly stopping. Emerald green energy drifted about, transforming the surroundings of the Tree of Life into an Emerald Secret Realm.
Creatures began to revive in the Emerald Secret Realm, and the fruits on the branch tips were also gradually maturing.
The Magic Council specially set up a supervisory position for the Tree of Life, held by a Golden Wizard as the supervisor, permanently stationed in the Emerald Secret Realm of the Tree of Life.
After sorting all this out, the Legendary Wizards returned to the Celestial Realm with their harvest. Ace, on the other hand, mobilized the Magic Net and used it to mold four simulated propulsion organs and two simulated devouring mouthparts.
These were world-class megastructures, possessing the effects of a world power thruster and a powerful attack weapon. Ace called them the Tail of the World and the Blades of the World. Using only the Magic Net was not enough. Ace slowly absorbed the various ruin materials digested within the world to gradually fill these two megastructures.
While Ace worked hard alone to complete the three world-class megastructures—the Eye of the World, the Tail of the World, and the Blades of the World—within the Celestial Realm, Leyden’s experiment finally yielded results.
During these few months, he conducted hundreds of experiments, hardly closing his eyes, and finally obtained a list called the Leyden Metal Sequence: …aluminum, zinc, tin… iron, copper, silver, gold…
When a metal from the front and a metal from the back were put together, an electric current would be generated; the farther apart the metal in the front and the metal in the back were, the larger the current.
Leyden looked at this sequence list with satisfaction, and suddenly had a flash of inspiration: “If these metals are connected in series end to end, wouldn’t it be possible to use a continuous current without consuming magic?”
He spaced these metals with wet cloths containing acid solutions and stacked them together. Sure enough, it generated a continuous electric current.
“This thing shall be called a Voltaic Pile [Electropile]. Since it was Bruce’s experiment that inspired me, why not call it the Bruce Pile.”
Although there was no answer yet as to why a continuous current would be generated between metals, a pile that could provide continuous current over a long period had been born. Leyden’s paper caused a huge repercussion. This greatly lowered the threshold for using electricity. It could be said that mortals could also conduct electrical experiments through it.
Seeing this article, Thales wrote with a surging heart:
“Electric current is like water flow. Water flow always flows to lower places. Then the flow of electric current is also due to the existence of a certain ‘potential,’ which can be called electric potential. The difference between electric potentials is called electric potential difference, which is the voltage I mentioned earlier.”
After writing this, Thales continued with his own experiments. He had discovered that the Leyden Jar could magnetize a steel needle, which made him believe there must be a certain relationship between magnetism and electricity.
“Not only magnetism, actually electricity can also emit light. There must be a certain connection among electricity, light, and magnetism!”
Thales’s eyes burned bright. As a Senior Wizard Apprentice, although he was a Level 3 Scholar, he couldn’t use many magics. The invention of the Bruce Pile helped him immensely.
The Bruce Pile, a power switch, and a wire formed a closed circuit. Thales brought a magnetic needle perpendicularly close to the wire; there was no change whatsoever.
He sighed, packed up his things, and the next day in the grand auditorium, he communicated about “Electricity, Bruce Current, and Magnetism” with the wizards of Academic City. In the auditorium, he repeated this experiment once again. The small magnetic needle still didn’t deflect.
Driven by an inexplicable impulse, he said to the wizards who came to communicate: “Let’s try what happens if we place the magnetic needle parallel to the wire.”
The magnetic needle actually swayed slightly before returning to its original state. Thales was extremely excited. He directly interrupted the communication with everyone, took his things, and left on the spot, locking himself in Warren’s laboratory.
A week later, after multiple experiments, Thales finally produced a thin, four-page experimental paper, Current Impact Experiment on Magnetic Needles.
In the conclusion, he wrote: “When the wire is parallel to the magnetic needle, the magnetic needle deflects; when the wire is perpendicular to the magnetic needle, the magnetic needle does not deflect; when the wire is parallel to the magnetic needle, and the current is reversed or the magnetic needle is moved above the wire, the direction of the magnetic needle’s deflection reverses.
“We can call this phenomenon electric conflict. Blocking electric conflict with wooden boards, glass, etc., can only change the strength of the electric conflict. At the same time, what can change the strength of the electric conflict is also the distance between the magnetic needle and the wire, and the magnitude of the current.
“If the magnetic needle is replaced with other materials, the electric conflict disappears. In other words, electric conflict is only effective on magnetic needles.
“We can consider the wire as a magnet, and the electric conflict is equivalent to the interaction between two magnets.
“What is most noteworthy is that this conflicts with magical mechanics. In magical mechanics, whether it is natural force or universal gravitation, it can be regarded as acting on the line connecting the centers of gravity of objects, which is a linear force. Electric conflict is a rotational force.
“We can be certain that rotational force, like universal gravitation, can act over long distances, but does it conform to the theory of action at a distance?
“Whether rotational force surpasses the domain ruled by magical mechanics is a question we need to discuss subsequently.”
Having finished writing this ending paragraph, Thales felt Source Power constantly surging in. He naturally advanced to a Level 1 Lifeform. Inside his Soul Sanctuary space, a rotating rune phantom appeared.
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