Abstract

In 1856, Wilhelm Eduard Weber and Rudolf Kohlrausch performed an experiment with a Leyden jar which showed that the ratio of the quantity of electricity when measured statically, to the same quantity of electricity when measured electrodynamically, is numerically equal to the directly measured speed of light. In 1861, in his paper entitled "On Physical Lines of Force", James Clerk-Maxwell equated the above ratio with the ratio of the dielectric constant to the magnetic permeability. In the same paper, Maxwell modeled Faraday's magnetic lines of force using a sea of molecular vortices that were composed partly of aether and partly of ordinary matter. He linked the dielectric constant to the transverse elasticity of this vortex sea, and he linked the magnetic permeability to the density. Since Newton's equation for the speed of sound involves the ratio of the transverse elasticity to the density, Maxwell was able to use the 1856 Weber/Kohlrausch ratio to show that light is a wave in the same medium that is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena. It will now be suggested that Maxwell's molecular vortices are more accurately represented with rotating electron-positron dipoles that are aligned in a double helix fashion with their mutual rotation axes tracing out the magnetic lines of force.