light

This is not necessarily accurate. We might, for simplicity, choose to only consider the electric field, remembering that the electric field and magnetic field are frame dependent. But, can you give a reference for this? Where did you learn this, and in what context?

TVP,

When you say "frame dependent" do you mean choosing which abstraction of a unitary reality to consider or do you mean that the "frame" is that unitary reality?

No offense meant it is just that my only referent for "frame" is to movies or video since I have done those.

j.

Neither. When I say reference frame, I am referring to my physical inertial system.

Huh!

You mean your personal, subjective, physical inertial system?

What does that have to do with the question?

Are you just having us on?

j.

Not at all. Sometimes I do, but not this time. What I mean is this, suppose you were on a street car just outside Milwaukee County Stadium when that great Milwaukee slugger, Hank Aaron, hit a home run in the same direction you were travelling. If your street car were going 30 mph and the ball was going 110 mph, from your frame of reference you would measure the ball travelling at 80 mph.

From what I understand, the electric and magnetic vectors are inextricably linked. Thus if we solve for electric vector (which we can understand and model fairly well) then we can extrapolate the answer for the magnetic vectors at the end point, or any intermediate point.

At least from the electric viewpoint we can understand and model behaviour of electrons and electric field theory, electrical resistance, particle speed and so on. The understanding of magnetism with no associated/isolated particle makes the understanding of the calculations and outcomes substantially more difficult.

I would suggest that we no longer deal with models. Indeed we have pictures not just at the molecular level but at the electron level as well as is illustrated at the web site below.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Scientists-Have-Filmed-For-The-First-Time-Ever-an-Electron-79369.shtml

As far as the question I cannot answer to the practice, I am not a physicist. Nonetheless, I would venture that the electric field is in fact the magnetic field. It is a current running through a wire or a coil that sets up a magnetic field and thereby inducing a current in the nearby wire or field.

In a piece of magnetized steel I would venture it is the electrons spinning in unison in atoms in aligned molecules that create the magnetic field.

But one thing seems to be certain. We no longer need to speak about models when in fact the photographs are proving our conjectures were in fact correct and reality.

j.