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My book, in mechanics, claimed that the normal forces were actually a result of electromagnetic force and that the "hand of the strongest weightlifter will crumble under the weight of a feather" if electromagnetic forces did not exist.

I imagine that it was due to some kind of attraction or repulsion between charges in the bodies. But I still cannot understand what exactly the statement tries to say. It also considers friction as a kind of normal reaction, so, I don't understand how the force actually sets up

Elendil
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1 Answers1

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The electromagnetic interaction is what stops atoms from being pushed close to each other (up to a point). Electrons are negatively charged so they repel the electrons in other atoms which are also negatively charged. As in this image:

Charge rules

If there was no electromagnetic interaction weightlifters and feathers wouldn't exist in the first place but hypothetically there would be nothing stopping atoms from getting very close to each other.

If you allowed atoms to get close enough to each other you would have to start accounting for the other interactions and who knows what would happen but that is probably outside of the scope of what the question is asking.

Charlie
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