The title says it all. How can you transfer energy from a wall outlet to a battery without touching it? After years of understanding electric energy as transferred through wires, wireless charging seems like magic.

This magic is important to understand because wireless charging is only becoming more ubiquitous. Wireless charging capability comes standard on most flagship smartphones produced today, and the technology is slowly being applied to other chargeable devices such as electric vehicles, wearable technology, and medical implants. Wireless charging is going to be a part of our society, whether you’re ready for it or not.

To be ready, here’s what you need to know. Wireless charging works by creating a magnetic field generated by electricity passing through a wire coil within the charger. This magnetic field is the “invisible magic” at work that spans the gap between the charger and the device, transferring energy without wires.

taken from an IndiaMart product listing

Due to a special physical phenomenon known as Faraday’s Law, this magnetic field produces a voltage in a matching wire coil within the device that is being charged. This voltage is the electric equivalent of potential energy.

At this point, we have successfully transferred electric energy across a gap with no wires! Hooray! The last step is using this voltage to charge the battery, just as if it was plugged in to a standard charger. At this point, the process of charging is complete.

Armed with this knowledge, you can debunk many misconceptions about wireless charging. For example, some avoid wireless charging lest its “radiation” leave harmful effects on their body. In this case, we know that there is no nuclear radiation here, simply electromagnetic energy at a very small scale.

Another misconception is that wireless charging is significantly slower than wired charging. While this used to be true, manufacturers are now selling wireless fast-chargers that charge much faster than before, even faster than standard wired chargers. While a wired fast-charger still edges out the win in charging speed, wireless charging is barely behind. (This is especially true of iPhones, since there is no wired fast-charger for iPhones.)

If you happened to know that metals redirect/affect magnetic fields (if not, then you do now), then you would notice that the annoyingly fragile glass phones of today are not completely purposeless; many phone manufacturers (including Apple) have switched from aluminum-backed phones to glass-backed, because wireless charging is incompatible with metal phones. This is also why cases designed for phones with wireless charging capabilities no longer are ever made of metal; wireless charging just doesn’t go through metal surfaces.

Overall, wireless charging isn’t too complicated; physically, the technology only consists of a coil of wire. However, the technology is the capability of changing the entire paradigm of how electronic devices, appliances, and vehicles are designed and used. Armed with this simple tool, we could see a revolution in consumer electronics in the coming years that reaches far beyond just smartphones.