"A feeling of repulsion, and of something akin to fear had begun to rise within me at the strange antics of this fleshless man.

He was so much worse in reality than in my distempered fancy, that afterwards I was attracted to him in very repulsion, and could not help wandering in and out every half-hour or so, and taking another look at him.

'So I noticed this double repulsion and thought we had to do something about it.

Important observations often associated with classically chaotic quantum systems are spectral level repulsion, dynamical localization in time evolution (e.g. ionization rates of atoms), and enhanced stationary wave intensities in regions of space where classical dynamics exhibits only unstable trajectories (as in scattering).

Many systems use magnetic attraction pulling upwards against gravity for these kinds of systems as this gives some inherent lateral stability, but some use a combination of magnetic attraction and magnetic repulsion to push upwards.

Charles-Augustin de Coulomb (; 14 June 1736 – 23 August 1806) was a French physicist. He was best known for developing Coulomb's law, the definition of the electrostatic force of attraction and repulsion, but also did important work on friction.

In this publication, Coulomb carries out the "determination according to which laws both the Magnetic and the Electric fluids act, either by repulsion or by attraction."

He thought that the attraction and repulsion were due to different kinds of fluids.

The repulsive forces can be electron cloud-electron cloud overlap or electrostatic repulsion.

Electrostatic repulsion then prevents agglomeration of the particles.

As Howard D. Weinbrot notes, "The passage skillfully includes many of Johnson's familiar themes – repulsion with slaughter that aggrandizes one man and kills and impoverishes thousands, understanding of the human need to glorify heroes, and subtle contrast with the classical parent-poem and its inadequate moral vision."

Bridgeman and Rothery have proposed a scheme which essentially has an O–O "triple" bond and an O–F single bond that is destabilised and lengthened by repulsion between the lone pairs on the fluorine atoms and the π-orbitals of the O–O bond.

Repulsion involving the fluorine lone pairs is also responsible for the long and weak covalent bonding in the fluorine molecule.

Females have been heard to give a decrescendo call similar to that of the Northern Pintail, as well as a creaking “inciting call” and a rasping “repulsion call”.