O.K. while the wife is cooking dinner I can at least start on a preable
Most of the masters who contribute to different disiplines were
mathematicians
who also were observant as tp what was around them and many did not
have formal teaching such as George Green and many others were were not
really discovered till long after death. Why mathematicians, well the
world is formulated around mathematics and you can see it every where
in nature and in the Universe. You can picture these mathematicians
thinking around the universe as being in the same order of a random
bubble on water where the contents of the buble was under partial
pressure and the thought come to mind as to where the meniscus
enclosing the content was going to burst but where.
In Germany more than 100 years ago a child literaly stood out above
other with his mastery of mathematics and thus was given all the
benefits possible so he could expand on his gift.
His name was Gauss and he got involved in mathematics that branched out
into many disiplines without a total investment into any one in
particular but just followed the path of mathematics.
A one set of thinking produced what is known as a Gaussian field in
electrostatics where he visualised a cluster of charges that were in
equilibrium and held inside a miniscus, border or what have you and
came up with what is known as Gausses law.
If you draw a rough circle and randomly insert a few small circles
inside the arbitary boundary we are seeng a cluster of charges as seen
by those small circles. Now for them to be in equilibrium they will
have to be like charges so lets put a + inside each circle to
demonstrate the polarity of the charges. Now we have to ask the
question of where the flux contained within this arbitary boundary is
going to break out and where? Gauss I am sure thought of a buble
knowing that if he placed a pin in the miniscus it would surely burst
so the contents ie flux emminating from the held charges.
Well he didn't go the pin route as he was smarter than that in that he
saw that the true reason the arbitary border burst was because the
socalled meniscus was given a displacement in shape that made it the
weakest point. Getting back to the cluster of charges held within what
I really should not be calling a miniscus he placed a separate charge
in the cluster marked with a - which provided a weak spot in the
arbitary boundary and thus the escaping flux will now escape at a known
point with some sort of velocity.... OOOps dinner is coming, refresh
yourself with Gausses law until I get back but dont get to swamped with
mathematics.