Re: superposition

[palmer@sfu.ca (Leigh Palmer)]

> Can anyone provide a way that I can justify superposition to
> students?  Usually we ask students to believe us that adding
> electric field vectors from individual charges sum without
> accounting for the interaction among the charges.  I have usually
> stated that this is what we find experimentally.  Is there a simple
> way to demonstrate its veracity?

The principle of superposition is empirical. It is the result of
any system in which fields (or other quantities) combine additively
like vectors - that's why those quantities are called vector
quantities! Thus the principle of superposition is a matter of
definition.

Leigh