How does the Electric Field create a force? [closed]

Question

If we have 2 charged particles which are a certain distance away from each other, they either attract of repel due to the electric field created by both of them. But I don't understand the mechanism of the force creation. What framework should I follow to visualise it?

Edit: Sorry for any confusions. There are 2 particles, and they move because of each other, somehow something happens and they both decide to move. Do we know what happens between them. According to Electricity and Magnetism, A charged particle creates an electric field around it. And the force is exerted on the second particle. Do we know the actual process of the creation of force which I could visualize to receive an intuition towards force and motion

P.S: I am trying to understand motion since many months now but I truly fail to understand it. Can you please suggest me a theory apart from QFT by which I could at least form an intuition for the motion.

Sorry for the delay in edit, my phone did not notified me about the interactions here.

Answer 1

But I don't understand the mechanism of the force creation

But the concept of electric charge and electric field is, by definition, the mechanism of the force creation - that humans have invented to model that which has been observed.

Never forget that the observed is the metaphysically given. It is up to us, as beings possessing a rational faculty, to find a conceptual and mathematical model that best explains the given as we understand it at the time.

Answer 2

In this situation, I just want to quote what Richard P Feynman once said in an interview. "If you hold two like poles of a magnet together, they repel apart, which means there is some force existing in between them avoiding them to have a contact. That's an experimental truth. But if you ask me why there is a force in between them that do not want them to have a contact, then there is no answer".

Why is always unexplainable. Science is not meant to explain a why. It is about how which is explained on a model based on the facts that cannot be explained using why's, which we call the foundation of science. It's a common mispractice to use why in science than how. You can explain how by creating a mathematical framework based on these empirical observations. For example, in this case, based on all these observations, you just invoke the model of field lines and say that two filed lines should never intersect and this will cause magnetic field to have two directions at the same point simultaneously and so and so. But these models are based on the above observed empirical results, which have no pure mathematical base.

Also one more thing I like to add. "Science is made up of facts as house is built up on stones, but an accumulation of facts is no more science than a heap of stones is a house"- Henri Poincare.

So the why in your question cannot be answered.

Answer 3

How does the electric field create a force

Actually, it's the electromagnetic field. Electromagnetic field interactions result in linear and/or rotational force. When we only see the former we tend to talk of an electric field, when we only see the latter we tend to talk of the magnetic field. But the field concerned is the electromagnetic field. See Wikipedia: "Over time, it was realized that the electric and magnetic fields are better thought of as two parts of a greater whole — the electromagnetic field". Also see Jackson's Classical Electrodynamics: "one should properly speak of the electromagnetic field Fμν rather than E or B separately".

If we have 2 charged particles which are a certain distance away from each other, they either attract of repel due to the electric field created by both of them. But I don't understand the mechanism of the force creation. What framework should I follow to visualise it?

You need to start by visualizing the electromagnetic field for one of your charged particles. It has a "screw" nature, not unlike the gravitomagnetic field. See Minkowski referring to it in Space and Time, and Maxwell referring to it in On Physical Lines of Force: "a motion of translation along an axis cannot produce a rotation about that axis unless it meets with some special mechanism, like that of a screw". With that in mind, combine the radial electric field lines with concentric magnetic field lines in a simplistic fashion like this:

Hopefully you now get a new concept of the electron's "spinor" nature. Hopefully you also noticed Maxwell's page title, and know that counter-rotating vortices attract and co-rotating vortices repel. Set down an electron near a positron, and they will move towards one another in a straight line. But if you throw the electron past the positron they will also move around each other, like this:

It's a bit like cyclones and anticyclones. Or cyclones and cyclones. Or anticyclones and anticyclones. The crucial point to appreciate is that charged particles don't move the way that they do because of some kind of magic that can never be explained. But because they are spinors, and moreover because they are dynamical spinors. The Einstein-de Haas effect provides hard scientific evidence of this. It "demonstrates that spin angular momentum is indeed of the same nature as the angular momentum of rotating bodies as conceived in classical mechanics". The electron magnetic moment backs this up. The Lorentz force $\mathbf{F} = q\left[\mathbf{E} + (\mathbf{v} \times \mathbf{B})\right]$ should now look more obvious. It's just a combination of the linear and rotational force that results from electromagnetic field interactions.