Starblade Darksquall wrote:

I'm just wondering about a few things involving the electromagnetic
force.

First off, it's said that bosons with spin 1 mediate repulsive forces
and bosons with spin 2 mediate attractive forces. A photon is spin 1.
So, how does it mediate attractive forces? Or do they mean that
like-charged particles will become repulsive for spin 1 bosons and
attractive for spin 2 bosons and unlike-charged particles will become
attractive for spin 1 bosons and repulsive for spin 2 bosons?

Bosons are integer-spin particles which mediate forces between fermions.
Odd spin bosons mediate repulsive forces; even spin bosons mediate
attractive forces. Bosons of the same type are indistinguishable and
have symmetric wavefunctions. Bosons obey Bose-Einstein statistics.

Bose-Einstein Statistics
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/phys...tatistics.html

Sam Wormley wrote in message ...
Starblade Darksquall wrote:

I'm just wondering about a few things involving the electromagnetic
force.

First off, it's said that bosons with spin 1 mediate repulsive forces
and bosons with spin 2 mediate attractive forces. A photon is spin 1.
So, how does it mediate attractive forces? Or do they mean that
like-charged particles will become repulsive for spin 1 bosons and
attractive for spin 2 bosons and unlike-charged particles will become
attractive for spin 1 bosons and repulsive for spin 2 bosons?

Bosons are integer-spin particles which mediate forces between fermions.
Odd spin bosons mediate repulsive forces; even spin bosons mediate
attractive forces. Bosons of the same type are indistinguishable and
have symmetric wavefunctions. Bosons obey Bose-Einstein statistics.

Bose-Einstein Statistics
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/phys...tatistics.html

This tells us nothing, except maybe that the thing mediating the
attractive force between electrons and protons is actually a boson,
and not the virtual photon, since the photon is spin 1.

Sam Wormley wrote:
Starblade Darksquall wrote:

I'm just wondering about a few things involving the electromagnetic
force.

First off, it's said that bosons with spin 1 mediate repulsive forces
and bosons with spin 2 mediate attractive forces. A photon is spin 1.
So, how does it mediate attractive forces? Or do they mean that
like-charged particles will become repulsive for spin 1 bosons and
attractive for spin 2 bosons and unlike-charged particles will become
attractive for spin 1 bosons and repulsive for spin 2 bosons?


Bosons are integer-spin particles which mediate forces between fermions.
Odd spin bosons mediate repulsive forces; even spin bosons mediate
attractive forces. Bosons of the same type are indistinguishable and
have symmetric wavefunctions. Bosons obey Bose-Einstein statistics.

Bose-Einstein Statistics
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/phys...tatistics.html

With all due respect to Wolfram, this is not quite accurate.
Spin-1 bosons mediate forces which can
be attractive OR repulsive, like E&M. Spin-2 bosons are needed
to mediate forces which are *only* attractive, like gravity. You
might be able to use a spin-2 boson to get a force which is always
repulsive, but it's been a while since I've studied this stuff.

-Eric