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Jon Drake
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Are conservative forces always taken as internal forces?
Where? It might help if we could see the precise statement and its context.Jon Drake said:somewhere
Only conservative forces have a potential energy associated with them. The force acts so as to decrease the potential energy.Jon Drake said:Yes, and I still cannot understand the logic behind the statement.
That answer is plainly incorrect. If I lift a book from the floor and place it on a table, I have increased the potential energy of the book/earth system. But the force of my hand on the book is not conservative.Jon Drake said:''Where? It might help if we could see the precise statement and its context.''
It actually came as a question :-
Which of the following can increase the P.E. of a system?
a. Conservative Force
b. Nonconservative Force
c. Both
d. None
The answer was (a).
Set a puck at rest in the middle of an air hockey table. Attach a spring between the puck and a point on one end of the table. Attach a second spring between the puck and a point on the opposite end. Draw your system boundaries so that the first spring and the puck are part of the system but the second spring is not.Jon Drake said:Alright, my final question is, can conservative forces in any case increase the P.E. of a system?