Re: Forces

["Richard W. Tarara" <rtarara@saintmarys.edu>]

Certainly, but that doesn't make it any less confusing for students.  The
'attractive potential' terminology spills over into chemistry where they
really are talking about Electrical Potential without the sophistication of
4-vector spacetime.  Having just been working on this topic with our
Chemistry majors I was sensitive to this 'seemingly' inconsistent usage.

Rick

-----Original Message-----
From: Leigh Palmer <palmer@sfu.ca>


> (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.