text
stringlengths
0
6.73k
gets too large the body will be torn apart or crushed, depending on the kind of
distortion. "The amount of force for which Hooke's law is valid depends upon
the material; for instance, for dough or putty the force is very small, but for
steel it is relatively large. Hookeˆs law can be nicely demonstrated with a long
coil spring, made of steel and suspended vertically. A suitable weight hung on
the lower end of the spring produces a tỉny twist throughout the length of the
wire, which results in a small vertical deflection in each turn and adds up to a
large displacement iŸ there are many turns. lf the total elongation produced,
say, by a 100-gram weight, is measured, it is found that additional weights of
100 grams will each produce an additional elongation that is very nearly equal
to the stretch that was measured for the frst 100 grams. This constant ratio
of force to displacement begins to change when the spring is overloaded, i.e.,
Hooke's law no longer holds.
12-4 Eundamental forces. Fields
We shall now discuss the only remaining forces that are fundamental. We
call them fundamental in the sense that their laws are fundamentally simple. We
shall first discuss electrical force. ObJects carry electrical charges which consist
simply of electrons or protons. If any t£wo bodies are electrically charged, there
1s an electrical force between them, and if the magnitudes of the charges are
q¡ and qa, respectively, the force varies inversely as the square of the distance
between the charges, or ' = (const)giqa/r2. Eor unlike charges, this law is like
the law of gravitation, but for 2e charges the force is repulsive and the sign
(direction) is reversed. The charges g¡ and qs can be intrinsically either positive
or negative, and in any specifc application of the formula the direction of the
force will come out right ïif the g's are given the proper plus or minus sign; the
force is directed along the line between the two charges. The constant in the
formula depends, of course, upon what units are used for the force, the charge,
and the distance. In current practice the charge is measured in coulombs, the
distance in meters, and the force in newtons. 'Then, in order to get the force
--- Trang 241 ---
to come out properly in newtons, the constant (which for historical reasons is
written 1/4zeo) takes the numerical value
cọ = 8.854 x 10~12 coul”/newton - m?
1/4meo = 8.99 x 109 N - m2/coulŸ.
Thus the force law for static charges is
F. = qiqar/4aegrẺ. (12.2)
In nature, the most important charge of all is the charge on a single elec-
tron, which is 1.60 x 10~†! coulomb. In working with electrical forces between
fundamental particles rather than with large charges, many people prefer the
combination (qei)Ÿ/4zeo, in which qe is deñned as the charge on an electron. This
combination occurs frequently, and to simplify calculations it has been defned
by the symbol eŸ; its numerical value in the mks system of units turns out to
be (1.52 x 10~14)2, The advantage of using the constant in this form is that the
force between two electrons in newtons can then be written simply as e2/z?, with
r in meters, without all the individual constants. Electrical forces are much more
complicated than this simple formula indicates, since the formula. gives the Íorce
between two objects only when the objects are standing still. We shall consider
the more general case shortÌy.
In the analysis oŸ forces oŸ the more fundamental kinds (not such forces as
friction, but the electrical force or the gravitational force), an interesting and very
Important concept has been developed. Since at first sipht the Íorces are very
much more complicated than ¡is indicated by the inverse-square laws and these
laws hold true only when the interacting bodies are standing still, an improved
method is needed to deal with the very complex forces that ensue when the bodies
start to move in a complicated way. Experience has shown that an approach
known as the concept of a “field” is of great utility for the analysis of forces of
this type. To illustrate the idea for, say, electrical force, suppose we have two
electrical charges, g¡ and qs, located at points ? and respectively. Then the
force between the charges is given by
F. = qiqar/4aegrẺ. (12.3)
To analyze this force by means of the field concept, we say that the charge g
at produces a “condition” at , such that when the charge ga is placed at ?
--- Trang 242 ---
1t “feels” the force. This is one way, strange perhaps, of describing 1t; we say
that the force # on ga at Tỉ can be written in two parts. lt is g¿ multiplied by a
quantity that would be there whether ga were there or not (provided we keep
all the other charges in their right places). # is the “condition” produced by q,
we say, and #' ¡is the response of ga to #. E/ is called an clectric feld, and ït 1s a
vector. The formula for the electric fñeld # that is produced at by a charge g
at P is the charge g¡ tỉimes the constant 1/4zeo divided by zŸ (z is the distance
from to ?#?), and it is acting in the direction of the radius vector (the radius
vector ? divided by its own length). The expression for # ¡is thus
E = qir/4negrở. (12.4)
We then write
P=qsE, (12.5)
which expresses the force, the field, and the charge in the field. What ¡is the point
of all this? "The point ¡is to divide the analysis into two parts. One part says that
something produces a field. 'Phe other part says that something is øcfed ơn by
the fñeld. By allowing us to look at the two parts independently, this separation
of the analysis simplifies the calculation of a problem in many situations. If many
charges are present, we first work out the total electrie feld produced at ?# by all
the charges, and then, knowing the charge that is placed at , we fñnd the force
On I1.
In the case of gravitation, we can do exactly the same thing. In this case,
where the force #' = —Œmqmar/rỞ, we can make an analogous analysis, as
follows: the force on a body in a gravitational fñeld is the mass of that body
times the field Œ. The force on rn¿ is the mass ma times the field Œ produced
by mị; that is, E! = mạ(C. Then the fñeld Œ produced by a body of mass rn
is Œ = —Œm?/rỞ and it is direcbed radially, as in the electrical case.
In spite of how it might at fñrst seem, this separation of one part from another
1s not a triviality. It would be trivial, jus6 another way of writing the same
thing, if the laws of force were simple, but the laws of force are so complicated
that it turns out that the fields have a reality that is almost independent of
the objects which create them. One can do something like shake a charge and
produce an effect, a field, at a distance; if one then stops moving the charge, the
field keeps track of all the past, because the interaction between two particles 1s
not instantaneous. lt is desirable to have some way to remember what happened
previously. If the force upon some charge depends upon where another charge
--- Trang 243 ---
was yesterday, which it does, then we need machinery to keep track of what went