The discussion revolves around the relationship between electricity, magnetism, and relativity, exploring whether magnetism can be considered merely a relativistic effect of electric forces. Participants examine the nature of electromagnetic forces, the concept of pseudo-forces, and the observer-dependent distinctions between electric and magnetic phenomena.
Participants express multiple competing views regarding the nature of magnetism and its relationship to electric forces, with no consensus reached on whether magnetism is fundamentally a pseudo-force or a distinct real force.
Discussions include references to mathematical representations of electromagnetic fields and the implications of special relativity on the understanding of these forces, but specific mathematical details remain unresolved.
As long as there are no magnetic monopoles, I think you can see it in this way, but you don't have to. That's probably a philosophic question.My question however is twofold, is magnetism nothing but electric forces when relativity is taken into account?
No.If the answer is yes, does that make magnetism a sort of psuedo-force?
If the answer is yes, does that make magnetism a sort of psuedo-force?
The electromagnetic force is a real force. You can split the real electromagnetic force into an electric component and a magnetic component. These are components of a real force, not independent forces in their own right. Thus they are not pseudo forces, but they are frame dependent.hideelo said:does that make magnetism a sort of psuedo-force?
hideelo said:Thanks to everyone for responding. Just to clarify, this is not two separate forces, not one force and a psuedo force, but one force seen from two different frames of reference?
Yes. Perhaps you recall doing inclined plane problems where you would break the force of gravity into a normal component and a sliding component. The one force is gravity, the normal and sliding forces are just components of that one force. How you split gravity up into normal and sliding forces depends on the angle of your "frame". It is a similar concept about how you split the EM force into E and M components.hideelo said:Just to clarify, this is not two separate forces, not one force and a psuedo force, but one force seen from two different frames of reference?
There are different mathematical ways of representing the electromagnetic field. The first one views the electric and magnetic fields as three-dimensional vector fields. These vector fields each have a value defined at every point of space and time and are thus often regarded as functions of the space and time coordinates. As such, they are often written as E(x, y, z, t) (electric field) and B(x, y, z, t) (magnetic field).
If only the electric field (E) is non-zero, and is constant in time, the field is said to be an electrostatic field. Similarly, if only the magnetic field (B) is non-zero and is constant in time, the field is said to be a magnetostatic field. However, if either the electric or magnetic field has a time-dependence, then both fields must be considered together as a coupled electromagnetic field using Maxwell's equations.[2]
With the advent of special relativity, physical laws became susceptible to the formalism of tensors. Maxwell's equations can be written in tensor form, generally viewed by physicists as a more elegant means of expressing physical laws.
In a limited sense it does. There are two invariant (frame independent) quantities that can be formed from the electromagnetic field, namely E·B and E2 - B2. Depending on whether the latter quantity is positive or negative, you can say that (at a particular point) an electromagnetic field is "mostly electric" or "mostly magnetic".thegreenlaser said:Rather, it seems to show that while an "electromagnetic" effect is definitely real, it doesn't make much sense to say that something is fundamentally "electric" or "magnetic" because that distinction is observer-dependent.