Intuition Behind Principle of Superposition

Asked May 02 '18 at 17:57

Active May 02 '18 at 17:57

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What's the intuition, and if any, logical argument behind the principle of superposition of electric fields and forces?

The force with which two charges interact is not changed by the presence of a third charge

This is a pretty significant result in electrostatics, which I'm not able to predict using logical arguments such as symmetry, among many other possibilities. So, what's the intuition behind it? Why does it work, and how can we deduce it theoretically?

asked May 02 '18 at 17:57

stoic-santiago

1,881

In quantum mechanics electrostatic interactions can be thought of as charges passing virtual photons between each other, photons of course do not interact with each other so would be uneffected by virtual photons coming from a third charge. Though I don't particularly like that answer – Ummdustry May 02 '18 at 18:04
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Research? See Quora. Also Intuitive explanation of the waves superposition and Is the superposition principle universal? – sammy gerbil May 02 '18 at 18:58

Intuition Behind Principle of Superposition

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