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Ampère's circuital law
Concept in classical electromagnetism / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Ampère's law" redirects here. For the law describing forces between current-carrying wires, see Ampère's force law.
In classical electromagnetism, Ampère's circuital law (not to be confused with Ampère's force law)[1] relates the circulation of a magnetic field around a closed loop to the electric current passing through the loop.
James Clerk Maxwell derived it using hydrodynamics in his 1861 published paper "On Physical Lines of Force".[2] In 1865 he generalized the equation to apply to time-varying currents by adding the displacement current term, resulting in the modern form of the law, sometimes called the Ampère–Maxwell law,[3][4][5] which is one of Maxwell's equations that form the basis of classical electromagnetism.