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I am writing the paper that involves the history of Lorentz force and I would very much like to add some specific references that involve experimental validation of Lorentz force. The only one I was able to find was J.J. Thomson 1897 paper "Cathode Rays" published in "Philosophical Magazine". However, in that paper the Lorentz force is not mentioned although it is evident that the deflection of the electron beam must be due to the Lorentz force. Can someone please point me to historic papers that describe the experiments that validate the Lorentz force?

Qmechanic
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gallieo1985
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  • May be you can include the cyclotron motion.but its not experiment to check the validity.but it says how the Lorent force is related to relevant quantities,such as charge,magnetic field or velocity etc. – Raihan Amin Dec 08 '18 at 14:16
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    The lorenz force is continually validated in particle experiments as the momenta of charged particles are measured by the curvature in a known magnetic field, from bubble chambers to LHC – anna v Dec 08 '18 at 18:05
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    I don't think you're going to find a single experiment that was "the" original verification of the Lorentz force law. There was a gradual accumulation of theoretical and experimental work, starting with Oersted ca. 1820 and culminating around the time of the 1897 paper by Thomson that you mention. –  Dec 08 '18 at 18:10
  • Related question by OP: https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/444936/2451 – Qmechanic Dec 08 '18 at 19:03

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So I am personally interested in electromagnetic forces applied to condensed matter, and while these systems perhaps do not exhibit the simplest manifestations of Lorentz forces, I can recommend two historical papers:

Edwin Hall (1879): "On a New Action of the Magnet on Electric Currents"

This paper described the discovery of the Hall Effect, which of course is a manifestation of the Lorentz force. Its a great read just to see how they wrote scientific papers back then (rather informally), but it's also historically interesting to see the motivation for his experiment: It was controversial whether the "magnetic force" acts upon the electric current or conductor which carries it. Maxwell thought it was on the conductor, and Hall seemed to show it was on the current.

Nichols and Hull (1901): "A Preliminary Communication on the Pressure of Heat and Light Radiation"

This is one of the earliest papers on quantitative measurement of radiation pressure, which of course can be understood in terms of Lorentz forces (the magnetic force term is what applies the radiation pressure for normally-incident light on matter). See also Rothman and Boughn, American Journal of Physics 77, 122 (2009) (a more pedagogical take) for more on this.

Gilbert
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