Electrostatic force

[Conundrumer]

Basically the same thing as attraction (gravitational force), except opposite charges attract.
Compare how objects of different signs (o is zero attraction/charge) interact:
Gravitational
+ + attract
- - repel
+ - neutral
+ o attract
- o repel

Electrical
+ + repel
- - repel
+ - attract
+ o neutral
+ o neutral

Why should Algodoo have this force?
1. As you can see, Algodoo's primary method of advertisement is by showing how it can be used in education for younger children. Surely, showing the concepts of electromagnetism's opposites attracting would be a great supplement to understanding how this world works, especially since electricity (and magnetism) are not intuitive concepts. (magnetism can be simulated by artificially creating opposite "poles).

2. To continue with this theme on education, even people my age still don't understand the concepts of electromagnetism. Models of various concepts in physics, such as why light objects are attracted to charged objects (electrical induction), why metals are attracted to magnets (paramagnetism), why our hair stands up when we touch charged objects (tendency of charges to collect at points), etc, for the same reason that we normally can't see electricity. Algodoo with electrostatic force will definitely help us visualize.

3. Oh yea, expand the above to chemistry: working models of atoms (using bohr's model) will finally be possible! Molecules would formable, though not fully accurately, but it'll be good enough to help with visualization of matter at the atomic level. Brag about how Algodoo is a chemistry simulator~

4. Because of how the electrostatic force is neutral towards objects with no charge, it'll be significantly more useful/practical than using the gravitational force in whatever contraption people make. Not only that, the "electric motor" description will finally be accurate!

Sadly, the entirety of electromagnetism is impossible to implement since it requires all three dimensions, while Algodoo has only 2(.5). Also, implementing electrical currents requires treating objects as collections of particles, so that's not practical/simple as well.

[Rrobba]

This could prove to be useful, even if I might not use it much. Also, nice reasoning and explaining.

Support + 1

[guyboy]

I wanted to make this exact same suggestion, but I saw this post so I revived it instead.

I was thinking about if this was possible with scripts. I'm guessing it is, but only in a pretty limited way. That is, it wouldn't support many objects, or it wouldn't behave as well as gravitational attraction.

I think this would be awesome. Does anyone have any ideas?

[Conundrumer]

I remember playing around with position and velocity variables of objects, after the ability to directly change those values were implemented a few months ago. You could technically implement another set of physics, almost like creating a physics simulator in a physics simulator. As convoluted and hackish as it may seem, the electrostatic force is at least significantly easier to simulate than collisions.

[guyboy]

Yeah, adding new layers of physics is possible, like here:

Complex wing surfce

Kilinich

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But they wouldn't benefit from the complex solving methods Algodoo uses. That's why it would probably perform much worse than the built-in attraction feature.

That's why it would be great if we could tweak attraction parameters in the script menu in order to let more general types of attraction benefit from the engine.

[jon_joy_1999]

I would like to mention that + 0, and - 0 could not be neutral. how would you handle + .01?