Oersted

Hans Christian Oersted

Oersted was a Danish physicist who was born in Rudkøbing in 1777 and who died in Copenhagen in 1851.

His most famous discovery is the interaction between electricity and magnetism. (April 1820)

This experiment shows that a wire produces a magnetic field around itself which has an effect on the compass. If we reverse the direction of the current in the wire, the direction of the magnetic field will also reverse. And the direction of the compass will change.

Thus we can say that a current (or moving charge) produces a magnetic field around it. This is called the magnetic effect of current.

In July 1820, he published a brief in Latin, in which he presented the results of his research.

Here is a quote from Oersted :

\".... It is sufficiently evident from the foregoing facts, that the electric current is not trapped in the driver itself, but is dispersed in its immediate environment. He is also obvious that the forces of the electric current are circular because in the absence of such a hypothesis, it seems impossible that the current to rotate the needle to the East when it is placed below the wire and west when it is placed above. ... \"

It creates the work of Ampere, Arago, Biot & Savart of Ploggendorff, and Faraday in 1820 and the invention of the first devices for measuring the current. 9 years after the publication of his memory Oersted became director of the Polytechnic School of Copenhagen.

1819: He discovered piperine which is a pungent (*au goût piquant)

molecule (found in pepper, for example).

1825: Oersted was the first who produced aluminum.

The oersted equals :