Question

Suppose your friend claims to have discovered a mysterious force in nature that acts on all particles in some region of space. He tells you that the force is always pointed away a definite point in space, which we can call the force center. The magnitude of the force turns out to be proportional to B/r3, where r is the distance from the force center to any other point. Your friend says that it has been determined that the constant of proportionality has been determined to be B= 2 (in units to be determined later), so that the magnitude of the force on a particle (in newtons) can be written as 2r^3, when the particle is at a distance r from the force center.
Required:
Write an expression of potential energy.

Answer 1

Answer:

             U = 1 / r²

Explanation:

In this exercise they do not ask for potential energy giving the expression of force, since these two quantities are related

             

         F = - dU / dr

this derivative is a gradient, that is, a directional derivative, so we must have

          dU = - F. dr

the esxresion for strength is

         F = B / r³

let's replace

          ∫ dU = - ∫ B / r³  dr

in this case the force and the displacement are parallel, therefore the scalar product is reduced to the algebraic product

let's evaluate the integrals

            U - Uo = -B (- / 2r² + 1 / 2r₀²)

To complete the calculation we must fix the energy at a point, in general the most common choice is to make the potential energy zero (Uo = 0) for when the distance is infinite (r = ∞)

             U = B / 2r²

we substitute the value of B = 2

             U = 1 / r²