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carrotcake10
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Homework Statement
http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/348/snake.gif
The figure above shows a piece of flexible wire lying on a frictionless table top. The wire can slide around and change its shape freely, but it cannot move perpendicular to the table.
Part I
If a current were to begin to flow counterclockwise in the wire which of the following would happen?
1. The wire would tend to stretch out into a circle
2. The wire would contract down to a tangled mess
3. Nothing
4. There is not enough information to tell.
Part II
If the current went clockwise, would that affect your answer to part a?
The Attempt at a Solution
For this problem, I feel like I should be looking at Newton's third law, which states, for any action, there is an equal or opposite reaction. So I look at the wire and I get the impression that the wire has a uniformly distributed charge, meaning that no part of the wire feels attracted to each other. If I had to have my choice at the solutions above, I would either pick 1 or 3 because I don't know the nature of two similarly charge wires. Would they push each other away for just ignore each other?
For part II, I don't feel like this would make a difference, because I feel like the direction in this problem is negligible.
Any help appreciated!
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