Motion in Attraction and Repulsion

How does motion present itself in the interaction of attraction and repulsion?

We can best investigate this in the separate forms of motion itself. At the end, the general aspect of the matter will show itself.

Let us take the motion of a planet about its central body. The astronomy textbooks follow Newton in explaining that orbits are the result of the joint action of 2 forces:

1. The attraction of the central body
2. A tangential force driving the planet along the normal to the direction of this attraction.

Thereby, it contradicts the above-mentioned basic law according to which all motion in our universe can only take place along the line joining the central points of the bodies acting on one another, or, as one says, is caused only by centrally-acting forces.

It introduces into the theory a motion which leads to the creation and destruction of motion.

• It presupposes a creator.

What had to be done, therefore, was to reduce this mysterious tangential force to a form of motion acting centrally, and this the Kant-Laplace theory of cosmogony accomplished.

According to this conception the whole solar system arose from a rotating, extremely tenuous, gaseous mass by gradual contraction. The rotational motion is obviously strongest at the equator of this gaseous sphere, and individual gaseous rings separate themselves from the mass and clump themselves together into planets, planetoids, etc., which revolve round the central body in the direction of the original rotation.

This rotation itself is usually explained from the motion characteristic of the individual particles of gas.

This motion takes place in all directions, hut finally an excess in one particular direction makes itself evident and so causes the rotating motion, which is bound to become stronger and stronger with the progressive contraction of the gaseous sphere.

But whatever hypothesis is assumed of the origin of the rotation, it abolishes the tangential force, dissolving it in a special form of the phenomena of centrally acting motion.

If the one element of planetary motion, the directly central one, is represented by gravitation, the attraction between the planet and the central body, then the other tangential element appears as a relic, in a derivative or altered form, of the original repulsion of the individual particles of the gaseous sphere.

Then the life process of a solar system presents itself as an interplay of attraction and repulsion, in which attraction gradually more and more gets the upper hand owing to repulsion being radiated into space in the form of heat and thus more and more becoming lost to the system.

One sees at a glance that the form of motion here conceived as repulsion is the same as that which modern physics terms “energy.”

By the contraction of the system and the resulting detachment of the individual bodies of which it consists to-day, the system has lost “energy,” and this loss, according to Helmholtz’s well-known calculation, already amounts to 453/454 of the total quantity of motion originally present in the form of repulsion.

Let us take now a mass in the shape of a body on our earth itself. It is connected with the earth by gravitation, as the earth in turn is with the sun; but unlike the earth it is incapable of a free planetary motion.

It can be set in motion only by an impulse from outside, and even then, as soon as the impulse ceases, its movement speedily comes to a standstill, whether by the effect of gravity alone or by the latter in combination with the resistance of the medium in which it moves. This resistance also is in the last resort an effect of gravity, in the absence of which the earth would not have on its surface any resistant medium, any atmosphere.

Hence in pure mechanical motion on the earth’s surface we are concerned with a situation in which gravitation, attraction, decisively predominates, where therefore the production of the motion shows both phases: first counteracting gravity and then allowing gravity to act - in a word, production of rising and falling.

Thus we have again mutual action between attraction on the one hand and a form of motion taking place in the opposite direction to it, hence a repelling form of motion, on the other hand.

But within the sphere of terrestrial pure mechanics (which deals with masses of given states of aggregation and cohesion taken by it as unalterable) this repelling form of motion does not occur in nature.

The physical and chemical conditions under which a lump of rock becomes separated from a mountain top, or a fall of water becomes possible, lie outside our sphere.

Therefore, in terrestrial pure mechanics, the repelling, raising motion must be produced artificially: by human force, animal force, water or steam power, etc. And this circumstance, this necessity to combat the natural attraction artificially, causes the mechanicians to adopt the view that attraction, gravitation, or, as they say, the force of gravity, is the most important, indeed the basic, form of motion in nature.

When, for instance, a weight is raised and communicates motion to other bodies by falling directly or indirectly, then according to the usual view of mechanics it is not the raising of the weight which communicates this motion but the force of gravity.

Thus Helmholtz, for instance, makes “the force which is the simplest and the one with which we are best acquainted, viz. gravity, act as the driving force… for instance in grandfather clocks that are actuated by a weight. The weight… cannot comply with the pull of gravity without setting the whole clockwork in motion.” But it cannot set the clockwork in motion without itself sinking and it goes on sinking until the string from which it hangs is completely unwound:

“Then the clock comes to a stop, for the operative capacity of the weight is exhausted for the time being. Its weight is not lost or diminished, it remains attracted to the same extent by the earth, but the capacity of this weight to produce movements has been lost…. We can, however, wind up the clock by the power of the human arm, whereby the weight is once more raised up. As soon as this has happened, it regains its previous operative capacity and can again keep the clock in motion.” (Helmholtz, Popular Lectures, German Edition, II. pp. 144 - 5.)

According to Helmholtz, therefore, it is not the active communication of motion, the raising of the weight, that sets the clock into motion, but the passive heaviness of the weight, although this same heaviness is only withdrawn from its passivity by the raising, and once again returns to passivity after the string of the weight has unwound. If then according to the modern conception, as we saw above, energy is only another expression for repulsion, here in the older Helmholtz conception force appears as another expression for the opposite of repulsion, for attraction. For the time being we shall simply put this on record.

When this process, as far as terrestrial mechanics is concerned, has reached its end, when the heavy mass has first of all been raised and then again let fall through the same height, what becomes of the motion that constituted it?

For pure mechanics, it has disappeared. But we know now that it has by no means been destroyed. To a lesser extent it has been conveyed into the air as oscillations of sound waves, to a much greater extent into heat - which has been communicated in part to the resisting atmosphere, in part to the falling body itself, and finally in part to the floor, on which the weight comes to rest.

The clock weight has also gradually given up its motion in the form of frictional heat to the separate driving wheels of the clockwork. But, although usually expressed in this way, it is not the falling motion, i.e.. the attraction, that has passed into heat, and therefore into a form of repulsion.

On the contrary, as Helmholtz correctly remarks, the attraction, the heaviness, remains what it previously was and, accurately speaking, becomes even greater.

Rather it is the repulsion communicated to the raised body by rising that is mechanically destroyed by falling and reappears as heat. The repulsion of masses is transformed into molecular repulsion.

Heat is a form of repulsion.

It sets the molecules of solid bodies into oscillation, thereby loosening the connections of the separate molecules until finally the transition to the liquid state takes place.

In the liquid state also, on continued addition of heat, it increases the motion of the molecules until a degree is reached at which the latter split off altogether from the mass and, at a definite velocity determined for each molecule by its chemical constitution, they move away individually in the free state. With a still further addition of heat, this velocity is further increased, and so the molecules are more and more repelled from one another.

But heat is a form of so-called “energy”; here once again the latter proves to be identical with repulsion.