Re: funny capacitor (EUREKA ?)

[Ludwik Kowalski <KowalskiL@MAIL.MONTCLAIR.EDU>]

"RAUBER, JOEL" wrote:

> The gauge freedom of electrical potentials is not particularly
> new, and I'm frankly a little surprised that you are not familiar
> with it.  I believe that  you are familiar but just haven't use the
> word "Gauge" to associate with the common fact that you are
> free to choose a reference point, which is all gauge freedom
> means in the context of electro-static potential discussions. ...

That is true. And things are more clear now then they were
several days ago. It is hard not to think about the wave function
and not to ask about its gauge. It appears together with the V
function in the Schroedinger equation. But this would take me
too far from what I am teaching. So I am not asking anything.

During the weekend I will catch up with adding recent messages
of this thread to my website, and with writing a little tutorial on
the number crunching aspect of electrostatics, that is on how to
"solve the Laplace equation" without calculus. I will post it here
for those who might be interested. Others would have to click
the delete button (without too much cursing, I hope.).
Ludwik Kowalski





>  Indeed, when you teach first semester physics and talk about
> gravitational potential energy and use formulas like U = m*g*h where you
> define h as the height above the gravitational reference, that you get to
> choose, you are excercising gauge freedom and therefore must be familiar
> with the idea.
>
> Joel Rauber