CHAPTER ONE

REVIEW OF ELECTROMAGNETIC PHENOMENON, VARIABLES, AND CIRCUIT

PARAMETERS

Atomic theory of matter

Fundamentals of electricity is related to matter. A matter has many smaller particles of the
same type known as atoms. An atom is a fundamental piece of the matters. These smaller
particles are determiners all electrical properties of the material. Therefore, the fundamental
study of electrical engineering starts from atom.

The atoms of different elements differ in their structure and this accounts for different
elements possessing different electrical property. Every atom consists of massive core nucleus,
carrying a positive charge particle proton and neutral charge particle neutron, around which
electrons move in orbits. Therefore, any atom has three sub atomic particles: proton, electron
and neutron.

i. Proton
It is a positively charged particle and it is inside the nucleus.
It has a mass of 1.673x10-27Kg which is 1836 times that of an electron.
It has a charge of 1.602x10-19C.

ii. Electron
It is a negatively charged particle revolving around the nucleus.
It has a mass of 9.11x10-31Kg.
It has a charge of -1.602x10-19C.

iii. Neutron
It is neutrally charged particle inside the nucleus between each proton.
It has a mass of 1837 times that of an electron.

Electric charge
An electric charge, denoted by Q is associated with a deficiency or the abundance of a group
of electrons and is equal to the product of the number of electrons and the charge on each
individual electron.
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Electrical charge manifests itself in the form of forces that, electrons repel other electrons but
attract protons, while protons repel each other but attract electrons.

The unit of electrical charge is the coulomb (C). The coulomb is defined as the charge carried
by 6.24 x 1018 electrons. Thus, if an electrically neutral (i.e., uncharged) body has 6.24 x 1018
electrons removed, it will be left with a net positive charge of 1 coulomb, i.e., Q = 1 C.
Conversely, if an uncharged body has 6.24 x 1018 electrons added, it will have a net negative
charge of 1 coulomb, i.e., Q = -1 C.

We can now determine the charge on one electron. It is Qe = 1/ (6.24 x 1018) = 1.60 x 10-19 C.

Example - An initially neutral body has 1.7 µC of negative charge removed. Later, 18.7 x 1011
electrons are added. What is the body’s final charge?

Solution - Initially the body is neutral, i.e., QInitial = 0 C. When 1.7 µC of electrons is removed,
the body is left with a positive charge of 1.7 µC. Now, 18.7 x 1011 electrons are added back.

This is equivalent to of negative

charge. The final charge on the body is therefore Qf = 1.7 µC - 0.3 µC =1.4 µC.

Coulombs law
Coulomb determined experimentally that the force between two charges Q1 and Q2 is directly
proportional to the product of their charges and inversely proportional to the square of the
distance between them.

Where, εo is the permittivity of space and Q1 and Q2 are the charges in coulombs, r is the
center-to-center spacing between the charges in meters, and k= 9 x 109.

As Coulomb’s law indicates, force decreases inversely as the square of distance; thus, if the
distance between two charges is doubled, the force decreases to (1⁄2)2 = 1⁄4 (i.e., one quarter)
of its original value. Negative result indicates attractive force and positive value indicates
repulsive force.
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Exercises:

1. Positive charges Q1 = 2 µC and Q2 = 12 µC are separated center to center by 10 mm.

Compute the force between them. Is it attractive or repulsive?

2. Two equal charges are separated by 1cm. If the force of repulsion between them is 9.7 x 10-
2
N, what is their charge? What may the charges will be, both positive, both negative, or one
positive and one negative?

3. After 10.61 x 1013 electrons are added to a metal plate, it has a negative charge of 3 µC.
What was its initial charge in coulombs?

Answers: (1). 2160 N, repulsive; (2). 32.8 nC, both (+) or both (-); (3). 14 µC (+)

Electric Field
Electric field is defined as the electric force per unit charge. The direction of the field is taken
to be the direction of the force it would exert on a positive test charge. The electric field is
radially outward from a positive charge and radially in toward a negative point charge.

By definition, the Electric field strength at a point is the force acting on a unit positive charge
at that point; that is,

The force exerted on a unit positive charge (Q2 = 1 C), by a charge Q1, r meters away, as
determined by Coulomb’s law is given as:

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Electric Field of Point Charge
The electric field of a point charge can be obtained from coulombs law:

The electric field is radially outward from the point charge in all directions. The circles
represent spherical equipotential surface.

Voltage
In electrical terms, a difference in potential energy is defined as voltage. In general, the
amount of energy required to separate charges depends on the voltage developed and the
amount of charge moved. By definition, the voltage between two points is one volt if it
requires one joule of energy to move one coulomb of charge from one point to the other. In
equation form,

Where, W is energy in joules, Q is charge in coulombs, and V is the resulting voltage in volts.
Voltage is defined between points. For the case of the battery, for example, voltage appears
between its terminals. Thus, voltage does not exist at a point by itself; it is always determined
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with respect to some other point. If we are dealing with a changing charge and energy, we
have

Example 2 - If it takes 35 J of energy to move a charge of 5 C from one point to another, what
is the voltage between the two points?

Solution

Exercices:

1. The voltage between two points is 19 V. How much energy is required to move 67 x 1018
electrons from one point to the other?

2. The potential difference between two points is 140 mV. If 280 µJ of work are required to
move a charge Q from one point to the other, what is Q?

Answers: 1. 204 J 2. 2 mC

Current
Assume now that a battery is connected as in Figure 1.1. Since electrons are attracted by the
positive pole of the battery and repelled by the negative pole, they move around the circuit,
passing through the wire, the lamp, and the battery. This movement of charge is called an
electric current.

Figure 1.1 electron current through a cross sectional area

The more electrons per second that passes through the circuit, the greater the current. Thus,
current is the rate of flow (or rate of movement) of charge. Since charge is measured in

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coulombs, its rate of flow is coulombs per second. In the SI system, one coulomb per second is
defined as one ampere (commonly abbreviated A). From this, we get that one ampere is the
current in a circuit when one coulomb of charge passes a given point (plane) in one second
(Figure 1.1). The symbol for current is I. Expressed mathematically,

Where, Q is the charge (in coulombs) and t is the time interval (in seconds) over which it is
measured. Alternate forms of the above equation are

If we are dealing with time varying charge, then we use the equation

Then

Example 3 – If 840 coulombs of charge pass through the imaginary plane of Figure 1.1 during
a time interval of 2 minutes, what is the current?

Solution - convert t to seconds

In the early days of electricity, it was believed that current was a movement of positive charge
and that these charges moved around the circuit from the positive terminal of the battery to the
negative as depicted in Figure 1–2(a). Based on this, all the laws, formulas, and symbols of
circuit theory were developed. (We now refer to this direction as the conventional current
direction)

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 Figure 1.2 conventional and electron flow of electric current

After the discovery of the atomic nature of matter, it was learned that what actually moves in
metallic conductors are electrons and that they move through the circuit as in Figure 1–2(b).
This direction is called the electron flow direction. However, because the conventional current
direction was so well established, most users stayed with it. Thus, in most books and in the
discussions that follow, the conventional direction for current is used.

Power
Power is defined as the rate of doing work or, equivalently, as the rate of transfer of energy.
The symbol for power is P. By definition,

Where, W is the work (or energy) in joules and t is the corresponding time interval in seconds.

The SI unit of power is the watt. From the above equation, we see that P also has units of
joules per second. If you substitute W = 1 J and t = 1 s you get P = 1 J/1 s = 1 W. From this,
you can see that one watt equals one joule per second.

To express P in terms of electrical quantities, recall that voltage is defined as work per unit
charge and current as the rate of transfer of charge, i.e.,

From voltage equation, W = QV. Substituting this into Equation for power yields P = W/t =
(QV)/t = V (Q/t). Replacing Q/t with I, we get

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Additional relationships are obtained by substituting V = IR and I =V/R into the above equation

For non-constant (time varying) conditions

Example - compute the power to each resistor in figure below.

Solution: Use the appropriate voltage in the power equation, for resistor R1 use V1 and for
resistor R2 use V2
R1=20Ω R2=100Ω
I

+ V1=10 V - + V2=50 V -

Solution
a.

b.

Exercises

a. Show that and

b. A 100 Ω resistor dissipates 169 W. What is its current?

Energy
We defined power as the rate of doing work. When you rearrange this equation, you get the
formula for energy:

If t time is measured in seconds, W has units of watt-seconds (i.e., joules, J), while if t is
measured in hours, W has units of watt-hours (Wh). Note that in the above equation, P must

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be constant over the time interval under consideration. If it is not, apply the equation to each
interval over which P is constant. For time varying circuits energy can be expressed as:-

Example: Determine the total energy used by a 100 W lamp for 12 hours and a 1.5 kW heater
for 45 minutes.

Solution - convert all quantities to the same set of units, thus 1.5 kW = 1500 W and 45 minutes
= 0.75 h.then,

Example - Suppose you use the following electrical appliances: 1.5 kW heater for hours,

a 3.6 kW boiler for 17 minutes, three 100W lamps for 4 hours, a 900W transfer for 6 minutes.
At 0.09 birr per kilowatt hour, how much will this cost?

Solution - convert time in minutes to hours. Thus,

Faraday’s law of Electromagnetic Induction

If a conductor is moved through a magnetic field so that it cuts magnetic lines of flux, a
voltage will be induced across the conductor, as shown in Fig.1.3. The greater the number of
flux lines cut per unit time (by increasing the speed with which the conductor passes through
the field), or the stronger the magnetic field strength (for the same traversing speed), the
greater will be the induced voltage across the conductor. If the conductor is held fixed and the
magnetic field is moved so that its flux lines cut the conductor, the same effect will happen.

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 Figure 1.3 Induced voltage when a conductor wire passes through a magnetic flux

If a coil of N turns is placed in the region of a changing flux, a voltage will be induced across
the coil as determined by Faraday’s law:

Where e is voltage induced N represents the number of turns of the coil and dϕ/dt is the
instantaneous change in flux (in webers) linking the coil. The term linking refers to the flux
within the turns of wire. If the flux linking the coil ceases to change, such as when the coil
simply sits still in a magnetic field of fixed strength, dϕ/dt = 0, and the induced voltage e = N
(dϕ/dt) = N(0) = 0.

a. Self-inductance
Self-inductance of a coil is a measure of the change in flux linking a coil due to a change in
current through the coil; that is,

Self-inductance can also be described as the measure opposition that an inductor exhibits to
the change of current flowing through itself, measured in henrys (H). The opposition in the
form of an induced voltage across the inductor is directly proportional to the time rate of
change of the current.

The induced voltage is given by:

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Where, L is the constant of proportionality called the inductance of the inductor.

The inductance of an inductor depends on its physical dimension and construction. Inductors
(coils) of different shapes have different formulas.

b. Mutual inductance
In addition to inducing an opposing voltage in the original coil, change in current in a certain
coil can also induce voltage across the terminals of another coil placed in its vicinity. This
phenomenon is called mutual inductance.

Figure 1.4 – mutual inductance in the primary and secondary coil of a transformer

Let us consider two coils, where the first one is called a primary coil (p) and the other one the
secondary (s). The magnitude of es, the voltage induced across the secondary, is determined by

Where, Ns is the number of turns in the secondary winding and ϕm is the portion of the primary
flux ϕp that links the secondary winding.

If all of the flux linking the primary links the secondary, then ϕm = ϕp

The mutual inductance between the two coils of the above figure is determined by

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Circuit elements
Ideal basic circuit elements:

Voltage source and current source are active elements, capable of generating electric energy

Resistor, inductor, and capacitor are passive elements, incapable of generating electric energy

Many practical systems can be modeled with just sources and resistors

The basic analytical techniques for solving circuits with inductors and capacitors are similar to those
for resistive circuits

i. Resistance and Resistors

A resistor is a material that provides an opposing force to the flow of charge through it. This
opposition, due to the collisions between electrons and between electrons and other atoms in
the material, which converts electrical energy into another form of energy such as heat, is
called the resistance of the material. The unit of measurement of resistance is the ohm, for
which the symbol is Ω (omega).

At a fixed temperature of 20°C (room temperature), the resistance is related to three factors by

Where, ρ (Greek letter rho) is a characteristic of the material called the resistivity, l is the
length of the sample, and A is the cross-sectional area of the sample. The voltage- current
relation of a resistor is determined by ohms’ law which is given by:

Where, I is the current through the resistor and V is the voltage

ii. Capacitance and Capacitor

A circuit element that is composed of two conducting plates or surfaces separated by a
dielectric (non-conducting) material. If a voltage source (v) is connected to the capacitor, +ve
charge will be transferred to one plate while –ve charge will be transferred to the other plate.

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Let the charge stored at the capacitor ≡q, then if v increases q also increases

Then from the above relation it can be found that

Where c is the capacitance of the capacitor

The capacitance can also have determined using the following relation

Where A=surface area of each plate

d=distance between the two plates
= Permittivity of free space

Current in capacitor
We know that

Then

Voltage in capacitor

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Where to is the initial time

The capacitor is a passive element and follows the passive sign convention

iii. Inductance and Inductors

Inductors are circuit elements that consist of a conducting wire in the shape of a coil (N=1).

If a current is flowing in the inductor, it produces a magnetic field, Φ.

Where L is the inductance and measured in Henry [H]

As the current increases or decreases, the magnetic field spreads or collapse. The change in
magnetic field induces a voltage across the inductor.

Current in inductors

Integrate both sides

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Electric sources

• An electrical source is a device that is capable of converting non-electric energy to

electric energy and vice versa.

Examples:

– Battery: chemical electric

– Dynamo (generator/motor): mechanical electric

(Ex. gasoline-powered generator, Bonneville dam)

→ Electrical sources can either deliver or absorb power

• Ideal voltage source (VS): Circuit element that maintains a prescribed voltage across
its terminals, regardless of the current flowing in those terminals.

• Voltage is known, but current is determined by the circuit to which the source is
connected.

• The voltage can be either independent or dependent on a voltage or current elsewhere

in the circuit, and can be constant or time-varying.

Device symbols:

Vs vs=µvx vs=βix

Indpendant VS voltage-controlled VS current-controlled VS

Ideal current source (CS): - Circuit element that maintains a prescribed current through its
terminals, regardless of the voltage across those terminals.

Current is known, but voltage is determined by the circuit to which the source is connected.
The current can be either independent or dependent on a voltage or current elsewhere in the
circuit, and can be constant or time-varying.

Device symbols:

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Is Is=αvx Is= βix

Independent CS voltage-controlled CS current-controlled CS

Example - Compute the power that is absorbed or supplied by each of the elements in the
following circuit

1IX
IX=4A R1
+

_
+ 12 V -
IR2 IR3=
+ 2A +
Vs=36 V 24 V 28 V
R2 R3
- -

Solution

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