| 35 | 35 | leaving us with the magnetic pressure term discussed above, and a term that points perpendicularly to the field line toward the center of the curvature (remember the tension term as a whole only arises when the field line is bent). Here [[latex($R_c$)]] is the radius of curvature. It represents the distance to which perpendicular lines drawn from the bent field lines would converge. This means if field lines aren't bent a lot, the radius of curvature would be large, thus coinciding with a smaller degree of magnetic tension. This would be expected for a small degree of bending in the field lines. |
