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visualizing a non-potential



Hi --

I cobbled up an improved scheme for systematically
portraying non-potentials, i.e. things that have a
slope but no well-defined height.

Here's an example. Clockwise = down, everywhere.
http://www.monmouth.com/~jsd/physics/img48/nonpot.png

This particular example is meant to depict the
electric field in a cyclotron, i.e. the electric
field induced by a magnetic field that is uniform
in space and steadily increasing as a function of
time.

Non-experts tend to think that everything that is
a function of position has to be a potential, but
it's just not true.

Pick two points A and B and count how many steps
you go down along a path from A to B. The answer
depends on your choice of path. For a potential,
the answer would be independent of path.

I'm moderately pleased with how this looks. This
is the tenth scheme I tried. The first nine looked
awful.

My next agenda item is to extend the technique to
handle cases where the magnitude (not just direction)
of the one-form depends strongly on position. This
is needed for e.g. thermodynamics, where PdV is an
important non-potential.

A more aesthetic non-potential is seen at
http://www.monmouth.com/~jsd/physics/img48/escher-waterfall.jpg
but it isn't quite as precise or generalizable.