Pull and Attraction
The words Pull and Attraction will probably always be in general use. They are used to describe some actions that are, prima facie, thought to be antonyms for Push and Repulsion. It would seem simple enough: if I push something, it moves away from me... and if I move something towards me I pull. Likewise: if I repulse something it goes away from me... and if I attract something it comes to me. We won't get away from everyday language of the masses, or slang... but I thing we could do better in the scientific world... Being careless can misdirect scientific research, discovery, and understanding.
We know that when a push occurs pressure has been brought to bear to cause the action of a push. What action do you suppose occurs to cause a pull? Think this one through very carefully before your answer... When analyzing something like this... you must think of all the scenarios, all the motions, and every little detail. Do not base your analysis on hearsay, habit, guesswork, imagination, or magic. If the thought comes to you that you want a chair closer to you... what do you do; after the thought? Lets give it a try... I suspect you can't pull the chair, by just looking at the chair, so you reach out, extending your arm towards the chair to make contact. If your fingers just barely touch the chair, can you pull it to you yet? No...? Do you reach a bit further, and curl your fingers behind a rung or arm of the chair? Then do you hold your fingers curved behind, as a hook? Do you pull the chair to you by retracting your arm? Maybe you even grabbed hold of the chair, squeezed, and held onto some part of the chair, and pulled your arm, hand and chair? So I guess we accomplished the pulling of a chair without much difficulty or argument?!
So now when I tell you that you didn't technically pull the chair... you pushed the chair to yourself... To put it bluntly... some 70 to 80 percent of you will think I am full of crap! But, at least finish this paragraph before you close the book on me. What did your fingers do when they made contact with the chair? At the points of contact of fingers to chair... was there any pressure exerted? Can you make a chair come to you without touching it and exerting pressure upon it? Can you pull open a door without touching it and applying pressure in the direction to you? Can you pull your trousers on without applying pressure? I think not. Yes, you have to exert pressure to pull a rope or chain. A horse has to exert pressure upon its horse collar to pull a wagon...
What about using a magnet to open an iron door? Good question. Below there is a quotation with a feasible explanation of how Einstein thought magnetism works. But, in truth science cannot really tell you exactly how magnets attract, or pull. Notice I used the word attract and pull. Please note at this point__ there is at difference between attracting, and pulling. You cannot pull without being in contact with the entity to be pulled. Whereas attraction is what is called action at a distance. To pull; the gap between the pulling entity, and the entity to be pulled; has already been crossed physically, as extending you arm as discussed above. If a magnet is already fastened to; in contact with; holding a piece of iron, as a door... you can put pressure on the magnet with your fingers and hold the magnet while you retract your hand to accomplish a pull so to speak. How the magnet holds on to the iron while this is progressing is still unknown. (Also, as is how does matter hold itself together?) But you must hold the magnet with pressure. If you fasten it to your body with a belt, the belt is holding the magnet with pressure. You can use glue or chewing gum, but you still have to use pressure to get your arm, or whatever interfacing device you use, back to you. If a magnet accidentally fell off a shelf near a metal door, and got stuck in a location... it might accelerate the door towards itself. However, the magnet probably fell off the shelf from some external source of pressure force action, and is stuck in a location, and whatever holds it stuck in position, is holding it stuck with pressure... and so it goes...
Science now explains the atom being held together by the exchange of particles within the atom. This exchange very well may be occurring, but science does not know how this exchange works. Actually, and usually, when particles are ejected, it is probably from impulse pressure. There is also the opposite reaction of the emitting body moving in reverse with which we may need contend. As when a rifle shoots a bullet, the gun recoils. Exchange of particles seems 180 degrees out of phase. If particles were being emitted continually outbound, they could be forcing the atom together. But, this is an unlikely scenario because where, and what particles; and is this radiation, reducing the atoms size, and etc. I suspect that an interaction of motion of an atom, and its interfacing with Space, is what holds it together.
If I stand facing north before a table with a book lying upon it, I can reach out and push with pressure upon the book__ to slide it north, west, east, south, and anywhere between. If I am facing north, and go past east or west, to push from behind, it is said I am pulling the book. Actually I guess I would be both pushing and pulling the book when I am exactly on the points of direction of east and west? Seems like a paradox in the making? Anyway once past the east and west points I would be pulling southeast, south, and southwest back towards myself. But, again at the point of contact of my finger with the book, in all cases herein, I am simply pushing with my finger bringing pressure to bear! Using my same finger I can walk around the table, and push the book. The book and the finger do not experience anything different... there is only pressure between them, as a push.
As far as I know with all the physics books I have, and have read; there is no formulae for pulling, other than formulae for pressure.
A pull is just pressure. Attraction is really just a far fetched notion, with no proof, or even good logic. Thus... pull and attraction is definitely classified as fantasy.
And, as mentioned on my Force chapter, there is no way to measure, sense, or observe, any pull or attraction without using some form of pressure.
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Page Relevant Quotes
§Pull: "1. exert force upon a (thing) tending to move it to oneself of the origin of the force." Oxford American Desk Dictionary.
"Newton's explanation of gravity has been repeated so often and so authoritatively that we all believe it and indeed feel that its truth has become part of our intuition. William D. MacMillan, professor of astronomy at the University of Chicago, was moved to put it this way on the occasion of a debate on relativity at Indiana University in 1926, as he somewhat belatedly opposed Einstein's new theory: 'The mechanics of Newton, like the geometry of Euclid, was based upon our normal intuitions and it is, therefore, intelligible in the normal sense of the word, just as Euclid is intelligible.' ...But considered without prejudice, the notion of action-at-a-distance is disturbingly unsatisfactory. If it were intuitively obvious, it might have been invented sooner than two millennia after Euclid!
"It is to be noted that the action of a pump is not properly described as 'suction"; that is, in all cases the motion that results is due to a push behind rather than a pull in front." A Survey of Physics; Saunders
SECTION XI
THE MOTIONS OF BODIES TENDING TO EACH OTHER WITH CENTRIPETAL FORCES
"I have hitherto been treating of the attractions of bodies towards an immovable centre; though very probably there is no such thing existent in nature. For attractions are made towards bodies, and the actions of the bodies attracted and attracting are always reciprocal and equal by Law III; so that if their are two bodies, neither the attracted not the attracting body is truly at rest, but both (by Cor., IV of the Laws of Motion), being as it were mutually attracted, revolve about a common centre of gravity. And if there be more bodies, which either are attracted by one body, which is attracted by them again, or which all attract each other mutually, these bodies will be so moved among themselves, that their common centre of gravity will either be at rest, or move uniformly forwards in a right line. I shall therefore at present go on to treat of the motion of bodies attracting each other; considering the centripetal forces attractions; though perhaps in a physical strictness they may be more truly be called impulses. But these Propositions are to be considered as purely mathematical; and therefore, laying aside all physical considerations, I make use of a familiar way of speaking, to make myself the more easily understood by a mathematical reader." The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Newton.
DEFINITION VIII
..."I likewise call attractions and impulses, in the same sense, accelerative, and motive; and use the words attraction, impulse, or propensity of any sort towards a center, promiscuously, and indifferently, one for another; considering those forces not physically, but mathematically; wherefore the reader is not to imagine that by those words I anywhere take upon me to define the kind, or the manner of any action, the causes or the physical reason thereof, or that I attribute forces, in a true and physical sense, to certain centres (which are only mathematical points); when at any time I happen to speak of centres as attracting, or as endued with attractive powers." From direct Latin to English translation of Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy: Sir Isaac Newton
"SCHOLIUM"
"...I here use the word 'attraction in general for any endeavor whatever made by bodies to approach to each other, whether that endeavor arise from the action of the bodies themselves, as tending to each other or agitating each other by spirits emitted; or whether it arises from the action of the ether or of the air, or of any medium whatever, whether corporeal or incorporeal, in any manner impelling bodies placed therein toward each other. In the same general sense I use the word 'impulse', not defining in this treatise the species of physical qualities of forces, but investigation the quantities and mathematical proportions of them, as I observed before in the definitions. In mathematics we are to investigate the quantities of forces with their proportions consequent upon any conditions supposed; then, when we enter upon physics, we compare those proportions with the phenomena of Nature, that we may know what conditions of those forces answer to the several kinds of attractive bodies. And this preparation being made, we argue more safely concerning the physical species, causes, and proportions of the forces..." Newton's Philosophy of Nature: Selection from his writings; Edited & Arranged with notes by H.S. Thayer.
"Newton himself regarded this 'action at a distance' as impossible." The ABC of Relativity; Bertrand Russell
...Today scientists no longer say that a magnet attracts a piece of iron by some kind of mysterious but instantaneous action-at-a-distance. They say rather that the magnet creates a certain physical condition in the space around it, which they term a magnetic field." The Universe and Dr. Einstein: Lincoln Barnett
"As for attraction, it was certainly introduced by Newton, not as a true, physical quality, but only as a mathematical hypothesis." Berkeley's Philosophical Writings; George Berkeley
"The electromagnetic attraction between negatively charged electrons and positively charged protons in the nucleus causes the electrons to orbit the nucleus of the atom, just as gravitational attraction causes the earth to orbit the sun. The electromagnetic attraction is pictured as being caused by the exchange of large numbers of virtual mass-less particles of spin 1, called photons. Again the photons that are exchanged are virtual particles. However, when an electron changes from one allowed orbit to another one nearer to the nucleus, energy is released and a real photon is emitted." A Brief History of Time; Stephen W. Hawking (RAD... Bah Humbug, see how easy it is to use the word attraction, and without any definition!)
"Action and reaction are said to be in bodies, and that way of speaking suits the purposes of mechanical demonstrations; but we must not on that account suppose that there is some real virtue in them which is the cause of the principle of motion. For those terms are to be understood in the same way as the term attraction; and just as attraction is only a mathematical hypothesis, and not a physical quality, the same must be understood also about action and reaction, and for the same reason. For in mechanical philosophy the truth and the use of theorems about mutual attraction of bodies remains firm, as founded solely in the motion of bodies, whether that motion be supposed to be caused by the action of bodies mutually attracting each other, or by the action of some agent different from the bodies, impelling and controlling them. Similarly the traditional formulations of rules and laws of motion, along with the theorems thence deduced remain unshaken, provided that sensible effects and the reasoning grounded in them are granted, whether we suppose the action itself or the force that causes these effects to be in the body or in the incorporeal agent." Berkeley's Philosophical Writings; Edited... David M. Armstrong
"Matter at the center of the earth has mass, but no weight, for the pull of the earth upon it then is in all directions." A Survey of Physics for College Students; Frederick A. Saunders. (pull... bah! rad)