Simple Nature - Light and Matter

Since the particle in our example was moving perpendicular tothe field, we have |F| = |q||v||B|, so|B| =|F||q||v|= 2kIc 2 R11.1.5 Symmetry and handednessImagine that you establish radio contact with an alien on anotherplanet. Neither of you even knows where the other one’s planetis, and you aren’t able to establish any landmarks that you bothrecognize. You manage to learn quite a bit of each other’s languages,but you’re stumped when you try to establish the definitions of leftand right (or, equivalently, clockwise and counterclockwise). Is thereany way to do it?t / Left-handed and right-handed definitions.If there was any way to do it without reference to external landmarks,then it would imply that the laws of physics themselves wereasymmetric, which would be strange. Why should they distinguishleft from right? The gravitational field pattern surrounding a staror planet looks the same in a mirror, and the same goes for electrictoward the wire. If the field had a component parallel to the wire, then theparticle would feel a force into or out of the page, but such a force is impossiblebased on symmetry, since the whole arrangement is symmetric with respect tomirror-reflection across the plane of the page.Section 11.1 More About the Magnetic Field 659