Re: IONS on metals/dielectrics

["Bob Sciamanda" <trebor@velocity.net>]

To belabor the point:  Classical Electrostatics is applicable to
idealized textbook situations re: configurations of fixed, bare point
charges.  As soon as you make an atom (a fortiori a molecule or an
object) you are into quantum mechanics - the door is opened to
extra-intuitive reality.

Bob Sciamanda
Physics, Edinboro Univ of PA (ret)
trebor@velocity.net
http://www.velocity.net/~trebor
-----Original Message-----
From: Ludwik Kowalski <KowalskiL@Mail.Montclair.edu>
To: phys-l@atlantis.uwf.edu <phys-l@atlantis.uwf.edu>
Date: Friday, October 02, 1998 6:51 AM
Subject: Re: IONS on metals/dielectrics


> Bob Sciamanda wrote:
>
> > It's worse than you say!  Classical physics can't make a stable atom,
let
> > alone a solid piece of material (out of electrodynamic forces).
Maxwell
> > would have the orbiting electrons radiate away their energy and spiral
> > into the nucleus.
>
> A very appropriate reminder. In my mind this paradox was the
> problem with the most advanced part of e.m. (radiation of waves
> into space).  Simple electrostatics, I was thinking, has no such
> paradoxes and is explainable in terms of classical physics.