Agreed!
Reserve the term "conservative force" to mean a force on a body which is
specified as an irrotational function of the object's position (ie.; curl
= 0).
For support of the term "conservative vector fields" as a general
mathematical concept,
go to www.wolfram.com and enter "conservative force fields" in their
search machine (upper right).
Bob Sciamanda (W3NLV)
Physics, Edinboro Univ of PA (em)
trebor@velocity.net http://www.velocity.net/~trebor
----- Original Message -----
From: "John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Monday, May 19, 2003 10:14 AM
Subject: Re: Non-conservative forces
| On 05/19/2003 07:21 AM, Bob Sciamanda wrote:
| >
| > It may be useful to speak of conservative SYSTEMS with a wider use of
| > the term "conservative" (non-dissipative); but "conservative
| > force/field " is a term with a well established and restricted
| > mathematical meaning.
|
| We can all agree that "conservative force field" has
| a narrower meaning that "conservative system".
|
| Consider again the idealized swing set: The force in
| the chain is not a force field at all, so we don't
| even get to ask whether it is a conservative force
| field or a non-conservative force field.
|
| It still looks to me like a conservative SYSTEM.