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Michael Faraday's induction ring separates two questions: can one electrical circuit affect another without an electrical connection, and does that effect continue under steady conditions? The surviving apparatus uses insulated copper windings around an iron ring; the Royal Institution dates the successful experiment to 29 August 1831.^[ref]

Faraday connected one winding group to a battery, the other to a galvanometer. Making battery contact deflected the needle; maintaining contact let it return to rest; breaking contact reversed the response. Reversing the battery reversed the deflections. His separate cylinder comparison enhanced induction with iron, whereas replacing it with copper gave no enhancement over the windings alone.^[ref]

The contrast between a switching response and a quiet steady state makes mutual induction tangible. A steady primary electric current can maintain magnetic flux without sustaining a secondary electromotive force. Changes in magnetic flux linkage matter, as expressed by Faraday's law of induction. This is why a driven electrical transformer uses repeated changes in magnetic flux to supply secondary power.

The galvanometer readout of an induction pulse also separates the measured motion from the inferred electric current. Its moment of inertia and damping mean that a deflection is not an instantaneous trace of electric current. The following coupled RL induction model calculates currents in a stipulated circuit, rather than fitting Faraday's needle motion or reconstructing his switching times.

Faraday's law of induction relates a changing magnetic field to circulation of the electric field. For a fixed oriented surface $S$ with boundary $C=\partial S$, choose the positive direction around $C$ by the right-hand rule: the fingers follow $C$ while the thumb follows the chosen unit normal. The fixed-loop electromagnetic electromotive force isThe final derivative of magnetic flux is an ordinary time derivative, with the surface held fixed. Reversing both the unit normal and the boundary direction reverses both signs. The loop may be an imagined path: the field law does not require a wire or an electric current. ^[ref].

For a computed example, a fixed single-turn loop has area $A=0.020{\mathrm{m}}^2$ and out-of-page unit normal. Prescribe an external uniform magnetic field in that direction with $B(t)=0.10\mathrm{T}+(0.30T/s)t$ for $0\le t\le 1.0\mathrm{s}$. ThenIn a quasistatic resistive model with electrical resistance $R=2.0\Omega$, neglect the loop's self-inductance and its own contribution to changing magnetic flux. Ohm's law givesThe magnetic flux rises from $0.0020\mathrm{Wb}$ to $0.0080\mathrm{Wb}$ while the induced electromotive force stays constant: it measures the rate of change, rather than the amount of magnetic flux. The negative sign means clockwise electric current; its magnetic field through the loop points into the page, as explained by Lenz's law. The toy model describes the interval of steady ramping, excluding switching transients at its ends.

For a moving conducting loop $C(t)$, the electromagnetic electromotive force instead includes the Lorentz force contribution from the local velocity $\mathbf{v}$ of each conductor segment:This form assumes a thin-wire model with a well-defined closed contour and spanning oriented surface that move compatibly, a magnetic field satisfying Gauss's law for magnetism, and conductor speeds small compared with the speed of light. Ideal sliding contacts such as those in motional electromotive force can be treated piecewise. Arbitrary changes of electrical connections require checking the actual contour and conductor velocities; differentiating the flux through an arbitrary chosen moving path is insufficient. The velocity here describes conductor motion, not the charge carriers' drift along the wire. ^[ref].

A short derivation of the fixed-loop integral statement applies Stokes theorem to the local curl equation and differentiates under the fixed surface integral. For the moving loop, the magnetic flux transport for a moving circuit adds the swept-area term $-{\oint }_C(\mathbf{v}\times \mathbf{B})\cdot d\mathbf{l}$ to $d{\Phi }_B/dt$. Combining these two identities gives the moving-loop statement. This derives the integral forms from the local field law; it is not a proof of that empirical law from mathematics alone.

The useful unity is geometric: changing the magnetic field, the enclosed area, or the orientation can change magnetic flux and hence produce an electromotive force. A coil's multiple turns are accounted for by magnetic flux linkage, rather than by multiplying a single-turn flux without checking which flux each turn receives. ^[ref].

Faraday's report read on 24 November 1831 describes opposite momentary responses when a neighboring circuit is connected and disconnected, with no continuing response while its steady electric current is maintained. These are concrete experimental roots of the changing-flux idea. The report predates the modern Maxwell equations notation used above. ^[ref].