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On 08/02/2007 12:53 PM, Jeffrey Schnick wrote:
Information indicating that if you talk more about interactions than
about one object exerting a force on another then students will gain a
better understanding of Newton's Third Law has convinced me that I
should use the word "interaction" more often in my introductory physics
course. As such, I want to make sure that I have a clear understanding
of how physicists use the word.
That's a good clear question, but there is not going to be
a comparably clear answer.
"Interaction" is a word physicists use when we don't want
to be precise, so looking for a precise meaning is futile
and/or a step in the wrong direction.
For example, when we say "Coulomb interaction" you don't
know whether that refers to the electrostatic force and/or
the electrostatic energy and/or the static electric field.
You can't write an equation
Interaction = .....
in contrast to the more-specific things mentioned above:
Force = ....
Energy = ....
Field = ....
Interaction is a useful catch-all term.
In the context of the third law, if you mean "force pair"
it might be best to say "force pair".