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Actually, if you were at rest on the ground, the van der Waals repulsion between the atoms of the soles of your feet and the atoms of the ground — which is electrical in origin — exactly cancels the gravitational force between your entire body and the entire mass of the Earth.

Imagine that!

And the van der Waals force isn't even a direct Coulomb force between two simple charges, but a much weaker indirect electrical repulsion between neutral atoms due to a deformation of the electron clouds. I know you might argue the repulsive van der Waals force is actually due to electron degeneracy and the Pauli exclusion principle, and that is also true. After fixing the positions of the nuclei, the physical ground state — which is given by a totally antisymmetric electron wavefunction — has a higher energy than some unphysical electron wavefunctions which aren't totally antisymmetric. But if we restrict ourselves to the physical wavefunction, the immediate repulsive force can still be traced back to electrostatics.

Actually, if you were at rest on the ground, the van der Waals repulsion between the atoms of the soles of your feet and the atoms of the ground — which is electrical in origin — exactly cancels the gravitational force between your entire body and the entire mass of the Earth.

Imagine that!

And the van der Waals force isn't even a direct Coulomb force between two simple charges, but a much weaker indirect electrical repulsion between neutral atoms due to a deformation of the electron clouds. I know you might argue the repulsive van der Waals force is actually due to electron degeneracy and the Pauli exclusion principle, and that is also true. After fixing the positions of the nuclei, the physical ground state — which is given by a totally antisymmetric electron wavefunction — has a higher energy than some unphysical electron wavefunctions which aren't totally antisymmetric. But if we restrict ourselves to the physical wavefunction, the immediate repulsive force can still be traced back to electrostatics.

Actually, if you were at rest on the ground, the van der Waals repulsion between the atoms of the soles of your feet and the atoms of the ground — which is electrical in origin — exactly cancels the gravitational force between your entire body and the entire mass of the Earth.

Imagine that!

And the van der Waals force isn't even a direct Coulomb force between two simple charges, but a much weaker indirect electrical repulsion between neutral atoms due to a deformation of the electron clouds. I know you might argue the repulsive van der Waals force is actually due to the Pauli exclusion principle, and that is also true. After fixing the positions of the nuclei, the physical ground state — which is given by a totally antisymmetric electron wavefunction — has a higher energy than some unphysical electron wavefunctions which aren't totally antisymmetric. But if we restrict ourselves to the physical wavefunction, the immediate repulsive force can still be traced back to electrostatics.

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QGR
  • 2.3k
  • 15
  • 21

Actually, if you were at rest on the ground, the van der Waals repulsion between the atoms of the soles of your feet and the atoms of the ground — which is electrical in origin — exactly cancels the gravitational force between your entire body and the entire mass of the Earth.

Imagine that!

And the van der Waals force isn't even a direct Coulomb force between two simple charges, but a much weaker indirect electrical repulsion between neutral atoms due to a deformation of the electron clouds. I know you might argue the repulsive van der Waals force is actually due to electron degeneracy and the Pauli exclusion principle, and that is also true. After fixing the positions of the nuclei, the physical ground state — which is given by a totally antisymmetric electron wavefunction — has a higher energy than some unphysical electron wavefunctions which aren't totally antisymmetric. But if we restrict ourselves to the physical wavefunction, the immediate repulsive force can still be traced back to electrostatics.

Actually, if you were at rest on the ground, the van der Waals repulsion between the atoms of the soles of your feet and the atoms of the ground — which is electrical in origin — exactly cancels the gravitational force between your entire body and the entire mass of the Earth.

Imagine that!

And the van der Waals force isn't even a direct Coulomb force between two simple charges, but a much weaker indirect electrical repulsion between neutral atoms due to a deformation of the electron clouds.

Actually, if you were at rest on the ground, the van der Waals repulsion between the atoms of the soles of your feet and the atoms of the ground — which is electrical in origin — exactly cancels the gravitational force between your entire body and the entire mass of the Earth.

Imagine that!

And the van der Waals force isn't even a direct Coulomb force between two simple charges, but a much weaker indirect electrical repulsion between neutral atoms due to a deformation of the electron clouds. I know you might argue the repulsive van der Waals force is actually due to electron degeneracy and the Pauli exclusion principle, and that is also true. After fixing the positions of the nuclei, the physical ground state — which is given by a totally antisymmetric electron wavefunction — has a higher energy than some unphysical electron wavefunctions which aren't totally antisymmetric. But if we restrict ourselves to the physical wavefunction, the immediate repulsive force can still be traced back to electrostatics.

Source Link
QGR
  • 2.3k
  • 15
  • 21

Actually, if you were at rest on the ground, the van der Waals repulsion between the atoms of the soles of your feet and the atoms of the ground — which is electrical in origin — exactly cancels the gravitational force between your entire body and the entire mass of the Earth.

Imagine that!

And the van der Waals force isn't even a direct Coulomb force between two simple charges, but a much weaker indirect electrical repulsion between neutral atoms due to a deformation of the electron clouds.