I took this picture above Holmfirth in Yorkshire. The fields got me thinking: who was the first to use the word "fields" with reference to force in Physics? It turns out that it was Michael Faraday in 1849. He is famous as the man who used iron filings to see the magnetism extending into the space around a magnet. I do that experiment a lot. Perhaps it was something about the extent of the iron filings on a flat surface. Michael Faraday's father might have recognised this landscape, having moved his family to London from the Pennines, but Michael himself was born just after the move. I wonder where Michael Faraday got his inspiration for the term?
