Fields (HL)

Essential ideas:

• Electric charges and masses each influence the space around them and that influence can be represented through the concept of fields.
• Similar approaches can be taken in analysing electrical and gravitational potentialproblems.

The move from direct, observable actions being responsible for influence on an object to acceptance of a field’s “action at a distance” required a paradigm shift in the world of science.

The ability to apply field theory to the unobservable (charges) and the massively scaled (motion of satellites) required scientists to develop new ways to investigate, analyse and report findings to a general public used to scientific discoveries based on tangible and discernible evidence.