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Re: Forces



(not posted)

Dear Rick,

How 'bout the vector potential or even
its spacetime four-vector counterpart?
"Potential" is used more broadly than
you suggest here.

Leigh

While we're nit-picking, the terminology 'attractive potential' is of course
confusing if we follow the common definitions for potential (PE per unit
something or other) since Energy is a scalar quantity. I suppose the
terminology arises since we use potentials to get to the fields which are
vectors.

After two years of reading Phys-L and PhysLRNR, I no longer wonder why
students are so confused.

Rick

-----Original Message-----
From: DSCHROEDER@cc.weber.edu


I never liked the word "force" when applied to the strong and weak
interactions, because these interactions are short-range and not
easily visualized classically. For the strong interaction there
is more or less an effective long-range potential which is always
attractive, and at still longer ranges there's the pion exchange
process between baryons which is also always attractive.