1. Electrostatics
Why Physics Stack Exchange recommends it
Physics Stack Exchange users point people to it as a clear university-level introduction to electromagnetism and cite Shankar's specific claims about charge splitting and superposition when asking follow-up questions.
Recommended by 1 people across 1 different months, 2014 to 2019.
What it is
First lecture of Yale's Fundamentals of Physics II (PHYS 201), taught by Professor Ramamurthi Shankar. It introduces electric charge, Coulomb's law, charge conservation and quantization, and the principle of superposition, after a short review of forces.
What people said
Recommends CuriousOne · 2014-12 · Physics Stack Exchange · on “"And God said......and there was light." What does these equations mean?”
These are Maxwell's equations of classical electrodynamics in integral form. They are one way of describing light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation. A more modern version of this physics joke would probably use the Lagrangian of the standard model... but you can see here why that won't make a good t-shirt: [LINK] As for a good textbook... the classic text is something like "the" Jackson "Classical Electrodynamics", but it won't do any good for a beginner. I would probably not even try to learn electrodynamics from a textbook, if you are interested. The better way would be to listen to an actual physics class online. MIT has Lewin's phenomenological class on electricity and magneti
Cites Kraken · 2018-12 · Physics Stack Exchange · on “When and why does the superposition principle of Coulomb's law fail to hold?”
In this lecture [this video] , Professor Shankar Ramamurthi says that the superposition principle for force vectors of Coulomb's Law is experimentally observed and is not a product of logical analysis. In fact, the principle fails to hold at Quantum level and is nothing but an excellent approximation of the actual forces acting on a test charge. That is to say, the vector sum of individual Coulombic Forces on a test charge is not exactly equal to the total force acting on it. When and why does it fail? I suspect it has to do with some non-linear equation that defines the interaction between charges at minuscule level. But then, why would we call it Coulomb's Law in the first place at Quantum leve
Cites AlvinL · 2019-08 · Physics Stack Exchange · on “Splitting of charge in a symmetry argument”
Suppose we have some object that has charge $q$ and we take an identical object and we bring the two objects together. One asks what the charge on either object would be after separating them. According to prof Shankar ( lecture [this video] @43:47) the objects will split the charge evenly (a symmetry argument). Question 1. Is it assumed $q = q_e(2k)$ i.e an even multiple of the elementary charge? Question 2. Does it make sense to consider where one object has precisely $q_e$ charge? If yes, how would the charge split if brought to contact with an identical object and separated? Question 3. Assuming protons or electrons are 'irreducible', is any charge non-integer multiple of $q_e$ attainable? E.