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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