Faraday

Is Lenz’s Law Just An Instance Of Newton’s Third Law?

by

The short answer is, “Yes.” The longer answer exemplifies one of the lovely things about physics: its internal unity, and the fact that a few basic principles manifest in a plethora of circumstances. And one of the typical shortcomings of our textbooks (and by extension our lectures). For me, this was one of the attractions … Read more

The Field Concept in Physics

by

Let’s continue the story in the previous post about Newtonian mechanics. In Newton’s theory of gravity, two objects that have mass attract each other with a gravitational force simply by virtue of their mass. The strength of the force is proportional to the product of the two masses, and inversely proportional to the square of … Read more