Talk:Conservative force

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Isn't it the force field, rather than the force itself, that is conservative? Michael Hardy 20:55, 29 May 2004 (UTC)

Certain forces (in the sense of phenomena, not vectors; e.g. gravity) always generate conservative force fields, and others (like the obvious friction) never do (and in fact could be argued not to generate force fields at all). --Tardis 04:52, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I removed magnetism as a nonconservative force; the cyclotron frequency (neglecting cyclotron radiation) seems to counterindicate it. Just because \nabla \times \mathbf{B} \not= 0 doesn't mean that the force is nonconservative! (Of course, time-changing magnetic fields can impart momentum, but that's separate.) Just drawing attention to this edit in case I'm crazy. --Tardis 04:52, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My edit

I tried to make the page a bit more accessible to the general public, to start with. I'll try to create an image, but I'm not good at that so I'll hope someone improve on me :) Considering the above discussion, I inserted the magnetic force again, but added a remark about time-independency of the electric field (Maxwell says: rot B = - dE/dt). Hope this will give people a nudge to start editing. --CompuChip 16:39, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

And I apologize for the apostrophe abuse... Should have known better --CompuChip 18:22, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
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