[Phys-L] Re: accelerating charge

[ajm at CSUPOMONA.EDU (John Mallinckrodt)]

Carl wrote:

> John Mallinckrodt replied to my message:
>
>  >I know what the second part is and rather than venture my own
>  >speculations, you might want to take a look at
>  >
>  ><http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath528/kmath528.htm>
>
> WOW, Slo, that's eerie! I'm almost ready to believe in ESP. Dead on
> target, I indeed was going to next invoke the equivalence principle
> and have Bob be stationary in a gravitational field.

Shucks, it wasn't really that hard to guess especially considering the source.

> That URL discusses lots of interesting stuff. Why haven't I ever
> heard of all this? Is it discussed further in published work? (I'm
> baffled as to who the author(s) of "mathpages" is. Can you enlighten
> me further about this interesting set of webpages?) And just how did
> you happen to have exactly the right URL at your fingertips?

The truth is, after seeing where you were going and scratching my own
head a bit, I had begun to compose a message suggesting that even if
charges in uniform gravitational fields DO radiate, the power would
be exceedingly small if g = 10 N/kg.  I had done a dimensional
analysis along the lines of that done by John Denker to find that the
power would be on the order of

   P ~ k_e q^2 g^2/c^3

and had calculated that even a fairly large charge of 1 microC would
emit something like a fraction of a yoctoW and was looking for
confirmation of my dimensional argument before posting.  So I googled
something like "accelerated charge radiation" and one of the first
few hits was the page I forwarded.  I found it fascinating enough
that I dumped the message I had been composing in its favor.

I also noticed that Kevin Brown, the author of mathpages, seems
surprisingly retiring.  I don't know anything about him other than
that he appears to live in Kent, Washington and is a prolific writer.

I'm off to Seattle tomorrow morning.  Maybe I'll look him up.

John "Slo" Mallinckrodt

Professor of Physics     and     Lead Guitarist
Cal Poly Pomona                  Out-Laws of Physics