Conceptual Question from TBR.... Can you crack it?

[SonhosDaVida]

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Why does the presence of positive charges in a medium not impact the force between 2 particles but will impact the overall force net force?

The TBR gives exaplanation: This is because the force vectors in a charged environment can be treated as independent of one another.

But wouldn't this mean that the force charges on 2 particles can be independent of one another, thus affecting their force?

 

[Optimist Prime]

Your reasoning is a little confusing to me, but basically if you look at coulombs law the force between two particles is only dependent on the charges of each particle, and the radius between the particles. F=k(q1)(q2)/r^2. This doesn't depend on other charges in the medium. However, the total net force is F1+F2=F3.... so the total net force does depend on it.

For example: say there are 3 charged particles we will call q1, q2, and q3. q1 and q2 will exert a certain F on each other, which is independent of q3. However, the total F between all 3 charges will depend on q3.

 

[BerkReviewTeach]

Nice job OptimistPrime!

 

[smukke]

I don't know if this is the right way to think about it but I'd think about it as the charge is evenly distributed in the medium, therefore the sum of changes of force within the medium will be zero because they all cancel each other out, and you'd have to measure from the outside (net force) to detect anything.

@BerkReviewTeach is this a wrong thought process?