Timeline for Railguns and Gauge Invariance
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
13 events
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| Oct 12, 2014 at 1:54 | comment | added | Selene Routley | ... wavefunction phase can be continuously, locally gauged into the field's components, postulate the whole lot is Lorentz invariant and wham! you've got ME for the massless field in terms of the potential. But, equally so, Roger Penrose has a magnificent geometrical motivation for $\mathrm{d} \mathcal{F} = \mu \mathcal{J}$ written up in about chapter 18 of the "road to reality". Both are wonderfully satisfying theoretically, and powerful from an educational standpoint. | |
| Oct 12, 2014 at 1:50 | comment | added | Selene Routley | @JamesBowery Yes, I'll have to read this one again. Moreover education and physics are different. You can certainly claim that certain gauge conditions are very confusing for a beginning lecture series and cite your teaching experience - this is true, but does Feynman claim anywhere that his predecessors "blunder"? My memory of the lectures is of his respect and careful reading of his intellectual forebears. And I certainly agree that there is a satisfying theoretical nature to the four-potential: postulate a minimal coupling of a massless field with the electron wavefunction, assert that ... | |
| Oct 11, 2014 at 16:10 | vote | accept | James Bowery | ||
| Oct 10, 2014 at 23:05 | comment | added | James Bowery | Feynman's vector potential lecture isn't "all in" on the vector potential but it is definitely "disgruntled" at definitions of "physicality" such as those posited by the critique of Cote and Johnson. Moreover, he does insist that there are times -- important times -- in the education of physicists when it would have been best to start with Maxwell in terms of the vector potential.. hyiq.org/Downloads/… | |
| Oct 10, 2014 at 0:53 | answer | added | Selene Routley | timeline score: 5 | |
| Oct 9, 2014 at 22:09 | comment | added | Selene Routley | Have you got a reference to what you mean by Feynman's similar attitude? From memory, Feynman in his famous lectures, notes how the widespread belief in the "nonphysicality" of the vector potential led to the Aharonov-Bohm effect's being overlooked until Aharonov and Bohm discovered it, as wel as repeatedly stating that Maxwell's equations are most readily grasped through the four vector potential. It's worth noting that the relevant phase difference, i.e. an integral around a closed path, in the electron interference pattern of the Aharonov Bohm effect is unaffected by a gauge transformation. | |
| Oct 9, 2014 at 14:13 | comment | added | CuriousOne | @innisfree: The paper keeps talking about how physics books contain all the wrong (implicit) gauges, but then doesn't mention which books and which gauges they are, nor does it give any analysis why those particular choices are wrong for the purposes of those texts. Making vague accusations against colleagues is NOT how scientists argue their case. These folks are your run of the mill cranks who don't even care to cite properly. There is a century and a half worth of literature about electrodynamics and the Jackson is all they can come up with? Please. | |
| Oct 9, 2014 at 11:24 | comment | added | innisfree | @CuriousOne they do not invoke strawmen in their arguments - gauge symmetries are thought by all serious physicists to be pivotal in our description of EM. I certainly don't think their work is correct, but it isn't particularly badly written, despite extreme hubris. | |
| Oct 9, 2014 at 10:06 | comment | added | CuriousOne | Are you asking me what makes a person a crank? I have no idea. I am more interested in physics than (developmental?) psychology. To compare these gentlemen with Feynman is a bit of a stretch... like from here to Alpha Centauri and back. :-) | |
| Oct 9, 2014 at 8:50 | comment | added | James Bowery | No offense taken. Do you have any idea as to why railgun development would lead them to a particularly intense interest in the vector potential, hence their "disgruntled physics" (which might also be used to describe Feynman's attitude toward the neglect of the vector potential in pedagogy as well as his protege Carver Mead). | |
| Oct 9, 2014 at 8:45 | history | edited | James Bowery | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Acknowledge the three versions to "Groupthink and the blunder of the gauges"
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| Oct 9, 2014 at 8:01 | comment | added | CuriousOne | No offense, but the "paper" reads like the typical pseudoscience gibberish of a disgruntled physics wannabe. Most of what is being said reads like a strawman party, with no support by literature citations other than a 19th century source, a reference to Jackson, which is probably the only textbook on electrodynamics the authors use (or not) and self-references. I would throw this one into the garbage can without wasting another minute on it. | |
| Oct 9, 2014 at 6:55 | history | asked | James Bowery | CC BY-SA 3.0 |