- #1
Saw
Gold Member
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The maximum I have found about contact force is very roughly this: it is nothing but electromagnetic force, meaning that, if two bodies collide, the electrons of the atoms of the outer shell of each body repel each other, those atoms displace towards their neighbours and repel them in turn, thus creating a sort of wave. My reflection is: if in the end, following Newton's Second Law, the body with more mass must get accelerated less and the body with less mass is to be accelerated more, this must be because the "waves" reach everywhere in each body, come back and come with information about how much mass the body has, so that the final result in terms of acceleration would depend on the relative difference between the two masses... But, if this speculation is close to the truth, why does the wave bounce back at all, if it does, and why does this process end at some time, having as outcome the acceleration of the bodies, and not continue in a loop of endless oscillation...?
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