Recent content by vmc303

Could someone give me a concise explanation of the difference between the two? I'm struggling to understand which concept to apply in a given situation, and what they actually signify.

So I emailed my professor, laying out my case and including the link to that solution set with the problem in it. I didn't get the response I was hoping for. He essentially brushed me off, and told me that learning how to interpret problems and "read between the lines" was an important part of a...

The way it was explained was that an electric field at a point is just the superposition of all the charges acting on that point. So, using Coulomb's law, we would just add up the invidual forces to arrive at the E field at that point. Here are a few illustrative quotes from the Power Point...

I still don't see the relevant difference; or if there is one, it's certainly something that was never taught in lecture, and can't be something he could expect us to know. How is the force exerted by a charge any different at all than the gravitational force exerted by a mass? And if there...

Interesting. Well, I'll take it to him and see what he says. I'm doubtful the outcome will be in my favor though. The annoying thing is that the teacher has often stressed the difference between force and net force in his lectures, asking questions like "An object is at rest on the top of a...

The problem is that it didn't say "no net force," it said "no force." It's not at all a trivial distinction in this case. The teacher has often harped on the difference between net force and force, and I assumed this was his attempt to trip people up on that subtlety. Given that the charge...

On my physics test yesterday, one of the questions was the following: At a particular point in space, a charge Q experiences no force. It follows that A. if charges are nearby, the total positive charge must equal the total negative charge. B. there is not enough information to...