Is the Continued Use of Abstract Entities Sound?
| Scientific Paper | |
|---|---|
| Title | Is the Continued Use of Abstract Entities Sound? |
| Author(s) | O N Oliveira |
| Keywords | Faraday's Law, abstract entities, electromagnetism, closed circuits |
| Published | 1993 |
| Journal | Galilean Electrodynamics |
| Volume | 4 |
| Number | 3 |
| Pages | 54-62 |
Abstract
A critique is directed at the use of abstract entities--such as fields--in electromagnetism, in particular the need to resort to imaginary closed circuits when applying Faraday's Law. It is suggested that a corrected direct action-at-a-distance scheme that considers retardation effects within a certain approximation, as deduced by Ritz and reviewed by O'Rahilly, is a plausible alternative which is firmly anchored in physical grounds. As an application we show how this direct action approach can be used, without resort to non-existing entities, to calculate the potential difference between the extremities of a metallic bar moving in a uniform magnetic field and where the reference frame is fixed with respect to the bar.