It would not surprise me if he just didn’t want to start talking about quantum exchange interactions in response to an interview question about how magnets work. Electrostatic repulsion does count for some of the effect of solidity, so his answer wasn’t wrong so much as incomplete. That was the point of his entire discussion: there are many different levels on which we can answer a “why” question.
It would not surprise me if he just didn’t want to start talking about quantum exchange interactions in response to an interview question about how magnets work. Electrostatic repulsion does count for some of the effect of solidity, so his answer wasn’t wrong so much as incomplete. That was the point of his entire discussion: there are many different levels on which we can answer a “why” question.