Magnetostatics

Magnetostatics studies magnetic fields produced by steady currents and permanent magnets. It treats situations in which fields and currents do not change with time.

Biot–Savart law: A law giving the magnetic field produced by a steady current element. It calculates the field from a specified steady current distribution.
Magnetic field: A vector field that describes magnetic influence on moving charges, currents, and magnetic materials. Magnetostatics focuses on this field when its sources and values are time-independent.
Electromagnet: A magnet whose field is produced by electric current, usually through a coil. Its field is designed using magnetostatic laws when the current is steady.
Electromagnetism: The physical theory unifying electric and magnetic fields and their interactions with matter. Magnetostatics is its restricted, time-independent regime.
Hans Christian Ørsted: A Danish physicist whose 1820 experiment showed that electric current deflects a compass needle. His observation revealed that steady currents produce magnetic effects.
Ampère's circuital law: A relation between the magnetic field around a closed loop and the current passing through it. Symmetry lets it determine fields around steady currents directly.
Electric current: The rate at which electric charge flows through a surface. Steady electric current is one of magnetostatics' principal field sources.
Solenoid: A helical coil of wire that produces a magnetic field when current flows through it. The long-solenoid field is a standard application of Ampère's law.
Electrostatics: The study of electric charges and fields that do not change with time. It treats static electric fields rather than fields generated by steady currents.
André-Marie Ampère: A French physicist who developed mathematical laws for forces and fields associated with electric currents. His work established a central quantitative framework for magnetostatics.

Linked from 10 pages