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At 11:23 AM -0400 7/11/05, Robert Cohen wrote:
> If there is only 1 sign of charge then it's obvious, like in
gravity, that charges attract each other, no? To conclude
that there are two different charges, you must exclude this
possibility. These are pith ball exercises in my E&M lab.
If there is only one sign of charge, how do you get neutral
pieces of paper? I suppose we'd have to assume the charge on
the paper is just too small to be noticed but significant enough
to interact with the charged balloon?
Ben Franklin was an advocate for the 'single fluid' model for
electricity (still often referred to as 'juice' by the unwashed).
If one object had considerably more 'electricity' than another
object, then a spark would jump when the gap is small enough. If the
gap is to large - there is still a net attraction as the excess tries
to neutralize the one that is deficient.
How about repulsion? Well, I guess that two objects that BOTH have
excess 'fluid' move away from each other because they want to
decrease the concentration of the excess fluid.
Very Aristotelian. But the best theory that Franklin could relate to
his experiments.