Coldfriction t1_jdx2d8f wrote
That is one of the questions where you say, "that is just how it is.".
The true answer is that they aren't two different things but two expressions of one thing: electromagnetism. There is truly only one single force present, but if you look at it from one side it looks like electrical forces and fields and from the other side it looks like magnetic forces and fields. The sides are always perpendicular because you have to be perpendicularly looking to only see one aspect of the electromagnetic force and not the other. You can in fact look at it from a skewed angle and see both.
So I don't have a better answer than that for an ELI5 answer. The electric field is like looking at the electromagnetic force from the front and the magnetic force is like looking at it from the side. If you can see some of the front you aren't looking straight at the side and if you can see some of the side you aren't looking straight at the front. In our dimensional space the perspectives have to be perfectly perpendicular to only see one aspect at a time.
ArkyBeagle t1_jdxq6fx wrote
> The true answer is that they aren't two different things but two expressions of one thing: electromagnetism.
Whether we call it electricity or magnetism is almost an artifact of how we measure it. Although the needle on an old-school analog voltmeter is a magnetic device...
I always liked the cover to Richard Lyon's "Understanding Digital Signal Processing". It's not specifically about E&M but the picture just lights the idea up for me:
breckenridgeback t1_jdyi5xf wrote
> That is one of the questions where you say, "that is just how it is.".
It's not so much "how it is" as that it's a specific choice of coordinates. The electric field is simply the part that, in a particular choice of coordinates, does not depend on motion. Changes in coordinates to a moving observer will "mix" the electric field into the magnetic and vice-versa.
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