• Claidheamh@slrpnk.net
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    1 year ago

    They’re different things. The OP means electromagnetism, Coulomb’s law has nothing to do with quantum mechanics, it’s classical physics.

    • photonic_sorcerer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      Okay but tell me, what theory superceded electromagnetism?

      Sure, EM is still useful, I use it in my work, but in the end, it all boils down to QM.

      • scubbo@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        “X depends on or is built up on Y” does not imply “X is Y”. Concepts, laws, techniques, etc. can depend or be higher-order expressions of QM without being QM. If you started asking a QM scientist about tensile strength or the Mohs scale they would (rightly) be confused.

        • photonic_sorcerer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          Yes, of course. Coloumb and Maxwell had no idea about QM when they were developing their ideas. Not to mention that these higher-order abstractions are just as valid as QM (up to a point, but so is QM). Depening on the application, you’d want to use a different abstraction. EM is perfect for everyday use, as well as all the way down to the microscale.

          My point is that EM is explained by QM, and therefore supercedes it. You could use QM to solve every EM problem, it’d just be waaaaay too difficult to be practical.

          • scubbo@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            I feel like you’re using “supercede” differently to the rest of us. You’re getting a hostile reaction because it sounded like you’re saying that EM is no longer at all useful because it has been obsoleted (superceded) by QM. Now you’re (correctly) saying that EM is still useful within its domain, but continuing to say that QM supercedes it. To me, at least, that’s a contradiction. QM extends EM, but does not supercede it. If EM were supercedes, there would be no situation in which it was useful.

      • Claidheamh@slrpnk.net
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        1 year ago

        Quantum mechanics didn’t supersede electromagnetism. Again, they’re different things. Electromagnetism is a fundamental interaction. Whereas quantum mechanics describes the mechanics of quantum particles. Whether those particles are affected by electromagnetic forces or not. It’s a description of how they behave at quantum scales.

        Coulomb’s law has nothing to do with quantum mechanics, it’s a description of how macroscopic charged particles interact. What the OP should have said to be correct is:

        Awesome to see the similarities between: Newton’s law of gravitation and Coulomb’s law

        I don’t know where he got quantum mechanics from.