Archive for Decline

Britain’s Potential Explained

Posted in Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on December 14, 2019 by telescoper

As a physicist I was intrigued by the recent use by Tory election campaigners of the slogan “Unleash Britain’s Potential”, so I decided to study the matter in more detail. I am pleased to say I am now ready to report on my conclusions.

First here is a sketch of Britain’s potential, which I denote V(r):

How do we interpret this potential?

Recall that the force F(r) derived from V(r) is given by

F(r) = - \frac{dV(r)}{dr}.

The gradient of this potential being negative the force is directed towards increasing values of r. By Newton’s Second Law this means accelerated motion to the right (i.e. in the direction of increasing isolation), accompanied by steady and irreversible decline.

Note also that the form of this potential implies that there is something completely repulsive at its origin.

I hope this clarifies the situation.

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