I was recently in Belgium and was obliged to rely on a Dutch edition of a book by Giancoli on electricity and magnetism. I don't speak Dutch but I know enough German and enough about E&M to get by with it, even without a dictionary. I was unable to find an exact English counterpart to the book. Maybe in the Dutch editions, some English book by Giancoli got divided up so as to be compatible with the courses taught in Holland. At any rate, I found one exercise interesting, namely it gave some geometrical information about the DNA double helix and asked for the force of attraction between two corresponding nucleotides on the two helices. I tried once to do the problem, got a different answer from the one at the back of the book, and then had to return the book. At any rate, no details of the solution were given, just the numerical answer.
I'd like to know of a book that works out some examples of this kind of computation in detail. It would be nice if it included DNA but it is probably a typical computation in chemistry or biochemistry. I know it is all just an application of the inverse square law and if I spend enough time on it, I can probably do it myself. I would just like to see how books that deal with this topic organize the computation. One of the things I would like to know is whether there are certain attractions and repulsions between electropositive or electronegative atoms in corresponding nucleotides that the books automatically ignore without computing them. I know that something like that is done in Hueckel theory in quantum chemical computations, so I don't rule out that it might be done in these kinds of classical E&M problems involving nucleotides.