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Re: CURRENT IN A WIRE



Two wires carrying parallel drift currents (same directions)
attract but particles in two parallel beams (same directions)
only repel each other by coulomb forces.

Hugh Haskell wrote:

At 20:52 +0100 11/19/02, Mark Sylvester wrote:

But Hugh, just last week I was demonstrating to my class the mutual
attraction of two conductors carrying parallel currents!

No problem there. The magnetic fields are real, and there is plenty
of relative motion to account for it. But imagine two beams of
identically charged particles in a vacuum, traveling parallel to each
other (and in the same direction) and with the same velocity. Other
than some random thermal motion which should cancel out, there is no
relative motion of the charges in one beam with respect to the
charges in the other beam, so can there be a magnetic interaction
between these beams? I can't see how, but I am open to arguments that
refute my claim.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto:haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto:hhaskell@mindspring.com>

(919) 467-7610

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This posting is the position of the writer, not that of SUNY-BSC, NAU or the AAPT.

This posting is the position of the writer, not that of SUNY-BSC, NAU or the AAPT.