Timeline for Is there any physical situation where the electric potential is discontinuous? [duplicate]
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| Feb 22, 2023 at 6:48 | history | duplicates list edited | Qmechanic♦ | duplicates list edited from Can the electric or gravitational potential be discontinuous? Why? to Are voltages discrete when we zoom in enough?, Can the electric or gravitational potential be discontinuous? Why?, Is electric potential always continuous? | |
| Feb 22, 2023 at 6:46 | comment | added | Qmechanic♦ | Possible duplicates: physics.stackexchange.com/q/131674/2451 , physics.stackexchange.com/q/212516/2451 , physics.stackexchange.com/q/500667/2451 and links therein. | |
| Feb 22, 2023 at 6:45 | history | closed | Qmechanic♦ | Duplicate of Can the electric or gravitational potential be discontinuous? Why? | |
| Feb 22, 2023 at 6:14 | comment | added | MikeTeX | @Emilio Pisanty: I disagree with the fact that uniform charge densities are "as not physical" as point charges: the charge densities are defined by smoothing the microscopic charges by convolution with a Gaussian, leading to the macroscopic field which is smooth. Sure, the macroscopic field is a mathematical being, but it is real, just like the mean of your score in a competition is real. | |
| Feb 22, 2023 at 4:58 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Feb 22, 2023 at 1:57 | history | edited | Qmechanic♦ |
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| Feb 21, 2023 at 23:42 | answer | added | Ján Lalinský | timeline score: 4 | |
| Feb 21, 2023 at 22:10 | answer | added | John Doty | timeline score: 3 | |
| Feb 21, 2023 at 21:26 | comment | added | Emilio Pisanty | And speaking of which: the electric potential is discontinuous at surface dipole layers. | |
| Feb 21, 2023 at 21:25 | comment | added | Emilio Pisanty | Indeed, nothing that is idealised is physical, but then that means that uniform charge densities (and anything not made of point charges) is not physical either. But that is not a constructive way to work. Electromagnetism often uses various idealised sources (some homogeneous, some singular) for good reasons, and adding axioms into physics that forbid the use of any of those sources should only be done for even better reasons. | |
| Feb 21, 2023 at 21:16 | comment | added | Steeven | @MichaelSeifert In general, strictly speaking, nothing that is idealized is physical. | |
| Feb 21, 2023 at 21:12 | answer | added | Arturo don Juan | timeline score: 4 | |
| Feb 21, 2023 at 21:10 | comment | added | Michael Seifert | Do you count point charges as "non-physical objects"? How about ideal dipoles? How about infinitesimally thin surface charges? One could argue that all three are equally reasonable; and if you grant me the last two I can give you a situation with a discontinuous potential (a thin sheet with a constant dipole moment per area.) | |
| Feb 21, 2023 at 20:58 | history | asked | MikeTeX | CC BY-SA 4.0 |