looks more like a capacitive effect between equal charges ...

if one electron tris to get out of line it's buddies now push it back where it needs to be ( like charges repel each other ) nois is the 'wrong' charge ... so it get's whacked in the head so to speak if it tries goign the wrong way

I'm tired of everyone saying "an order of magnitude". Since I work with computers (duh), a common order of magnitude is 2. Another common order is 1024. Only a _very_ few of our computers at work have precisely 10 fingers or 10 toes (they've seen a lot of accidents at the mill), so assuming "an order of magnitude" means 10 is a stretch.

So when I see someone write "magnitude 10", that's a nice change. It means I don't have to guess what the writer meant, and then try to do math based on my guess of some other nerd's mental image.

Eugene Goodrich claimed that "an order of magnitude" is ambiguous: does it mean 2, 10 or 1024? Or some other number. According to www.dictionary.com, it means "An estimate of size or magnitude expressed as a power of ten".

Regards,

Ciaran.

"And the solution is as simple using as the buddy system."

Some pedant can enumerate the flaws.

The problem is that magnitudes in base 10 are not universal, whatever a particular dictionary happens to say. It is compounded by the fact that order of magnitude comparisons are almost invariably used as approximations. Even if we accept base 10 for a moment, what is the smallest increase that we can describe as a order of magnitude increase? Does it have to be at least 10 times the size or can we round up a little? If so where is the threshold for rounding up?

Common sense would say that it needs to be a fivefold increase, until you remember that orders of magnitude are inherently logarithmic and therefore maybe sqrt(10) or 3.16x is a better choice, as that would be in the middle of the two on a logarithmic scale. There a lot of difference between scaling a quantity by 3.16 versus the implied 10 yet this is perfectly acceptable even with base 10 magnitudes.

In short, orders of magnitude are only good for executive summaries and marketing purposes. To make real value judgments much more quantitative terms are needed.

"Could it be the same principles that make a faraday cage work?"

Perhaps, in the very general sense that Maxwell's equations and charge conductors are involved. Since this is a quantum system only two atoms thick, the detailed explanation is going to end up being a bit different from any classical model. I'm sure they have some ideas, but I haven't seen the original article yet, so I can't comment on that.

And as for "order of magnitude," in physical science, so far as I've ever encountered (being a professional in the field), it invariably means a factor of ten. If it occasionally means something different to computer scientists, then this is a cultural difference that I (and I expect many other scientists) have never encountered.

In practice, when you say "an order of magnitude," you mean "about a factor of 10." It might be 8 or it might be 11, and this is commonly understood among physical scientists. But when you say "a factor of 10" and it's 8, then people could accuse you of dishonesty. So the two phrases don't mean quite the same thing. One is more precise than the other.