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This Famous Physics Experiment Shows Why the Government Should Support ‘Useless’ Science
Basic research often pays huge dividends—but that’s not why we do it.
And here’s why this was such a big deal: This suggested that changing electric and magnetic fields would create an oscillation that can travel through space: an electromagnetic wave. When Hertz showed his experimental verification of Maxwell's equations, the science community knew it was cool, and the general public got curious. Since the device sends out electromagnetic waves that reflect off objects, you can measure how long it takes for the signal to come back, which tells you how far away they are—i.e., radar and lidar, which is used in self-driving cars.
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