Re: Toward the equilibrium (and getting close)

[brian whatcott <inet@INTELLISYS.NET>]

At 12:01 1/6/01 -0600, I wrote:

> > Ohanian (AJP, Nov 1983, pg 1020)

> Ohanian's piece is a rousing good read. One would not argue with his
> introduction:
> "Many textbooks claim that the relaxation time for the approach to
> electrostatic equilibrium is epsilon sub 0 /rho. We show that for a
> good conductor, this claim is false.
/snip/
> Having had my share of fun with Ohanian's paper, I will give
> him credit for reminding us that Ohm's law is a statistical result
> of momentum gain in an electric field being lost by collision
> on a trajectory lasting abt 2E-14 seconds (0.02 picoseconds).
> At timescales shorter than this, Ohm's Law is not valid.



I very much regret omitting to mention Kate Cleary
of U Chicago Kersten Physics Teaching Center.
She sponsored the response I offered above by providing the
necessary reference materials.



brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net>  Altus OK
                Eureka!