Re:Quantum particles feel the influence of gravitational fie...
by hilbert42 on Saturday January 15, 2022 @11:15AM
(#29947517)
"The gravitational potential is the key thing being measured, and it's not the potential due to the Earth, it's the potential due to a 1-kg "source mass"."
Right, it seems that for many the 'potential' worldview is hard to grasp (it was for me too until it drawned on me that it's important).
I blame this on poor training and poor textbooks, they don't emphasize the importance of potentials. Also, we seem to grow up with a 'fields' perspective, electric fields and so on.
Maxwell was on the 'right' path with his original formulation of his equations where potentials were involved. However, when Heaviside reformulated them to the 'vector' view we quickly lost the 'potential' one.
No doubt, Heaviside's formulation is incredibly useful in electrical engineering and eleconics and as you'd know that's how they usually appear in textbooks. Trouble is, outside advanced physics texts the 'potential' view is usually omitted. Educators really need to fix this.
Another problem is that the description of a potential is not up to scratch. All too often we seem to be stuck with highschool physics descriptions - those that involve pith balls. The concept that we never measure absolute energy, but only differences often gets lost when describing potentials.
You'd reckon that after Feynman's well documented whingeing about the fact he wasn't taught about potentials early enough that you'd think by now educators would have had sufficient time to have rewritten their notes but apparently they've not.
Right, it seems that for many the 'potential' worldview is hard to grasp (it was for me too until it drawned on me that it's important).
I blame this on poor training and poor textbooks, they don't emphasize the importance of potentials. Also, we seem to grow up with a 'fields' perspective, electric fields and so on.
Maxwell was on the 'right' path with his original formulation of his equations where potentials were involved. However, when Heaviside reformulated them to the 'vector' view we quickly lost the 'potential' one.
No doubt, Heaviside's formulation is incredibly useful in electrical engineering and eleconics and as you'd know that's how they usually appear in textbooks. Trouble is, outside advanced physics texts the 'potential' view is usually omitted. Educators really need to fix this.
Another problem is that the description of a potential is not up to scratch. All too often we seem to be stuck with highschool physics descriptions - those that involve pith balls. The concept that we never measure absolute energy, but only differences often gets lost when describing potentials.
You'd reckon that after Feynman's well documented whingeing about the fact he wasn't taught about potentials early enough that you'd think by now educators would have had sufficient time to have rewritten their notes but apparently they've not.