4 ms·
What are the non-fundamental forces? If they are not fundamental, does that mean physicists suspect they are complex interactions of other, fundamental forces?
by tamana 10y ago
What are the non-fundamental forces?
If they are not fundamental, does that mean physicists suspect they are complex interactions of other, fundamental forces?
- semi-extrinsic 10y agoPhysicists will typically say "friction force", or "van der Waals force", or "centrifugal force" etc. when we talk about the interactions of ordinary things. These are all caused by the four fundamental forces (or they are ficticious, like the centrifugal force). And yes, the non-fundamental forces (like friction) are complex interactions of fundamental forces. For friction it's the sum of electric forces between atoms. The important point is that an atomistic model of friction gives you an essentially unsolvable problem, while the effective macroscopic model of friction is high school stuff.
- hackney 10y agoUnsolvable? Rubbish. I was under the impression with regards to the 4 forces that the only mystery was the mathematical relationship bewteen electricity and gravity. I'm sure it is not as big a mystery as popular science would have us believe.
- semi-extrinsic 10y agoWhen I say unsolvable, I mean that you can't solve for the speed of a brick sliding down an inlined plane by considering the electrostatic interactions between the ~10^17 pairs of interacting atoms per square centimetre of contact surface. It's just unsolvable in practice. But the effective formula that the magnitude of the friction force equals a material constant times the magnitude of the normal force from the plane onto the brick gives you a very simple model (solvable with pen and paper).
- hackney 10y agoI kind of figured no one would want such a crude result. That would be more like fluid friction dynamics. Thank you for elucidating.