Class: BS Second Semester

Course Name: Electricity and Magnetism

Book: Fundamentals of Physics

Halliday, Resnick and Walker
Extended (8th edition)
 ELECTRICITY AND MAGNETISM

 The physics of electromagnetism was first studied by the early Greek philosophers, who
discovered that if a piece of amber is rubbed and then brought near bits of straw, the
straw will jump to the amber. We now know that the attraction between amber and
straw is due to an electric force.

The Greek philosophers also discovered that if a certain type of stone (a naturally
occurring magnet) is brought near bits of iron, the iron will jump to the stone. We now
know that the attraction between magnet and iron is due to a magnetic force.

 From these modest origins with the Greek philosophers, the sciences of electricity and
magnetism developed separately for centuries - until 1820, in fact, when Hans Christian
Oersted found a connection between them: an electric current in a wire can deflect a
magnetic compass needle. Oersted made this discovery, a big surprise, while preparing
a lecture demonstration for his physics students.

 The new science of electromagnetism was developed further by workers in many

countries. One of the best was Michael Faraday, an experimenter (but, his collected
laboratory notebooks do not contain a single equation).

In the mid-nineteenth century, James Clerk Maxwell put Faraday's ideas into
mathematical form, introduced many new ideas of his own, and put electromagnetism
on a sound theoretical basis.

We begin with electrical phenomena, and our first step is to discuss the nature of electric
charge and electric force.

Electric charge is an intrinsic characteristic of the fundamental particles making up the

objects, that is, electric charge refers to the net charge or excess charge in an object. When we
say an object is charged, we mean that it has excess charge, either an excess of negative charge
(electrons) or an excess of positive charge (protons). With balance of charge, the object is said
to be electrically neutral, that is, it contains no net charge.

Charged objects interact by exerting forces on one another. Charges with the same electrical
sign repel each other, and charges with opposite electrical signs attract each other. we put this
rule into quantitative form as Coulomb's law of electrostatic force (or electric force) between
charges. The term electrostatic is used to emphasize that, relative to each other, the charges are
stationary (or moving only very slowly).
Electrostatics: It is a branch of physics that studies electric charges at rest i.e. we study, forces,
fields and potentials that arise from charges at rest. Here, “statics” refers to phenomena which
involves time-independent distribution of charges and fields etc.

(Note: similarly, magnetostatics deals with the field produced by constant current. For
example, when a wire carries a constant current, we get a static magnetic field, that does not
change with time).

The attraction and repulsion between charged bodies have many industrial applications,
including electrostatic paint spraying and powder coating, ink-jet printing and photocopying
etc…

We can classify materials generally according to the ability of charge to move through them.

Conductors are materials through which charge can move rather freely; examples include
metals (such as copper in common lamp wire), the human body, and tap water.

Nonconductors - also called insulators - are materials through which charge cannot move
freely; examples include rubber (such as the insulation on common lamp wire), plastic, glass,
and chemically pure water.

Semiconductors are materials that are intermediate between conductors and insulators;
examples include silicon and germanium in computer chips.

Superconductors are materials that are perfect conductors, allowing charge to move without
any hindrance.

The properties of these materials are due to the structure and electrical nature of atoms. Atoms
consist of positively charged protons, negatively charged electrons, and electrically neutral
neutrons. The protons and neutrons are packed tightly together in a central nucleus etc.

Coulomb’s law

Two charged particles (or point charges) exert on each other forces which are proportional to
the product of the particles (or charges) and inversely proportional to the square of the distance
between them. These forces act along the line joining the two particles (or charges), and are
repulsive for like particles (or charges) and attractive for unlike particles (or charges).
(see Fig. 1)

(Point charge? In microscopic sense, a point charge is one whose spatial dimensions are very
small compared with any other length pertinent to the problem under consideration etc.)
Electrostatic force: The force of repulsion or attraction due to the charge properties of objects
is called an electrostatic force.

The equation giving the force for charged particles is called Coulomb's law (after Charles-
Augustin de Coulomb, whose experiments in 1785 led him to it).

Fig. 1. Two charged particles repel each other if they have the same sign of charge, either
(a) both positive or (b) both negative. (c) They attract each other if they have opposite signs
of charge.

In terms of the charge particles (or point charges) in Fig. 2, where particle 1 has charge 𝑞
and particle 2 has charge 𝑞 , the force on particle 1 is

𝑭=𝑘 𝑟̂ (1)
𝒓𝟐

Fig. 2

where 𝑟̂ is a unit vector along an axis extending through the two particles, 𝑟 is the distance
between them, and 𝑘 is called the electrostatic constant. The constant 𝑘 is usually written as
𝑘 = 1/4𝜋𝜖 , and 𝜖 is the permittivity constant. Then the magnitude of the force in
Coulomb's law becomes
 | || |
𝐹= (2)

The values of constants 𝑘 and 𝜖 are given by

𝑘= = 8.99 × 10 N. m /C

and 𝜖 = 8.85 × 10 C /N. m

The SI unit of charge is the coulomb. For practical reasons having to do with the accuracy of
measurements, the coulomb unit is derived from the SI unit ampere for electric current 𝐼.
Current is the rate at which charge moves past a point or through a region i.e. 𝐼 = 𝑑𝑞/𝑑𝑡.
Where the current 𝐼 (in amperes) and 𝑑𝑞 (in coulombs) is the amount of charge moving past a
point or through a region in time 𝑑𝑡 (in seconds)

1 C = (1A)(1s)

(Note: The form of equation (1) is the same as that of the following Newton's equation for the
gravitational force between two particles with masses 𝑚 and 𝑚 that are separated by a
distance 𝑟:
𝑭 = 𝐺 𝟐 𝑟̂
𝒓
where 𝐺 is the gravitational constant. The laws differ in that gravitational forces are always
attractive but electrostatic forces may be either attractive or repulsive, depending on the signs
of the two charges. This difference arises from the fact that, although there is only one kind of
mass, there are two kinds of charge).

Still another parallel between the gravitational force and the electrostatic force is that both obey
the principle of superposition. If we have 𝑛 charged particles, they interact independently in
pairs, and the force on any one of them, let us say particle 1, is given by the vector sum

𝑭 , =𝑭 +𝑭 +𝑭 +𝑭 + ⋯+ 𝑭 (3)

in which, for example, 𝑭 is the force acting on particle 1 due to the presence of particle 4.
An identical formula holds for the gravitational force).

The Electric Field

(Note: The temperature at every point in a room has a definite value. You can measure the
temperature at any given point or combination of points by putting a thermometer there. We
call the resulting distribution of temperatures a temperature field. In much the same way, you
can imagine a pressure field in the atmosphere; it consists of the distribution of air pressure
values, one for each point in the atmosphere. These two examples are of scalar fields because
temperature and air pressure are scalar quantities).
The electric field is a vector field; it consists of a distribution of vectors, one for each point
in the region around a charged object, such as a charged rod.

Fig. 3

we can define the electric field at some point near the charged object, such as point P in Fig.
3(a), as follows: We first place a positive charge 𝑞 , called a test charge, at the point. We then
measure the electrostatic force 𝑭 that acts on the test charge. Finally, we define the electric
field 𝑬 at point P due to the charged object as

𝑭
𝑬= (4)

Thus, the magnitude of the electric field 𝑬 at point P is 𝐸 = 𝐹 ⁄𝑞 , and the direction of 𝑬 is
that of the force 𝑭 that acts on the positive test charge. As shown in Fig. 3(b), we represent
the electric field at P with a vector whose tail is at P. To define the electric field within some
region, we must similarly define it at all points in the region.

The SI unit for the electric field is the newton per coulomb (N/C).

Although we use a positive test charge to define the electric field of a charged object, that field
exists independently of the test charge. The field at point P in Fig. 3(b) existed both before and
after the test charge of Fig. 3(a) was put there.

We assume that in our defining procedure, the presence of the test charge does not affect the
charge distribution on the charged object, and thus does not alter the electric field we are
defining.
Electric Field Lines

Michael Faraday, who introduced the idea of electric fields in the 19th century, thought of the
space around a charged body as filled with lines of force. Although we no longer attach much
reality to these lines, now usually called electric field lines, they still provide a nice way to
visualize patterns in electric fields.

The relation between the field lines and electric field vectors is this:

(1) At any point, the direction of a straight field line or the direction of the tangent to a curved
field line gives the direction of 𝑬 at that point.

(2) The field lines are drawn so that the number of lines per unit area, measured in a plane
that is perpendicular to the lines, is proportional to the magnitude of 𝑬 .Thus, 𝐸 is large
where field lines are close together and small where they are far apart.

Fig. 4

If we place a positive test charge anywhere near the sphere, an electrostatic force pointing
toward the center of the sphere will act on the test charge, as shown in Fig. 4(a). In other words,
the electric field vectors at all points near the sphere are directed radially toward the sphere.
This pattern of vectors is neatly displayed by the field lines in Fig. 4(b), which point in the
same directions as the force and field vectors. Moreover, the spreading of the field lines with
distance from the sphere tells us that the magnitude of the electric field decreases with distance
from the sphere.
If the sphere of Fig. 4 were of uniform positive charge, the electric field vectors at all points
near the sphere would be directed radially away from the sphere. Thus, the electric field lines
would also extend radially away from the sphere. We then have the following rule:
“Electric field lines extend away from positive charge (where they originate) and toward
negative charge (where they terminate)”

Fig. 5 (a) The electrostatic force 𝑭 on a positive test charge near a very large, nonconducting
sheet with uniformly distributed positive charge on one side. (b) The electric field vector 𝑬 at
the location of the test charge, and the electric field lines in the space near the sheet. The field
lines extend away from the positively charged sheet. (c) Side view of (b).

(a) (b)
Fig. 6

(a) Field lines for two equal positive point charges. The charges repel each other. (The lines
terminate on distant negative charges.)

(b) Field lines for a positive point charge and a nearby negative point charge that are equal in
magnitude. The charges attract each other.