Electric Forces and Fields

1.1 EVIDENCE FOR ELECTRIC FORCES: THE

OBSERVATIONAL FACTS

* There are two types of electric charge, called positive and

negative. The subatomic particle called a proton has a
positive charge, and an electron has a negative charge.

* Charge comes in quantized units. All protons carry the

same amount of charge +e, and all electrons carry a charge -
e. We will discuss how charge is measured and the unit of
electric charge below.
* Like charges repel each other; unlike charges attract. The
electric force between two objects is repulsive if the object
carry "like" charge, that is, if both are positively charged or
both are negatively charged. The electric force is attractive
if the two objects carry "unlike" charge. The
expression"unlike charges" means that one charge is
positive and the other is negative. The terms like and unlike
thus refer to the signs of the charges, not to their
magnitudes.

* Charge is conserved. The total charge on an object is the

sum of all the individual charges (protons and electrons)
carried by the object. The total charge can be positive,
negative, or zero. Charge can move from place to place, and
from one object to another, but the total charge of the
universe does not change.
What is Electric Charge?

Charge is a fundamental property of matter: the

amount of charge that is "on" or "carried by" a
particle determines how the particle reacts to
electric and magnetic fields. It is similar to the
quantity we call mass; the mass of a particle
determines how it reacts when a force acts on it.
The mass of a particle is a measure of the amount
of matter it carries , whereas the charge of a
particle is a measure of the amount of "electric-
ness" it carries.
In the SI system of units, charge is measured in
coulumbs (C) in honor of French physicist Charles de
Coulomb (1736-1806). The charge on a single is ¹

Electron charge = -e = -1.60 x 10^-19C

And the charge carried by a single proton is

Proton charge = +e = +1.60 x 10^-19C

We use the symbol e to denote the magnitude
of the charge on an electron or a proton. We
will always take e to be a positive quantity (e =
+1.60 x 10–19C). We use the symbols q and Q
to denote charge in general, such as the total
charge on a bit of paper.
1.2 ELECTRIC FORCES AND COULUMB'S LAW

Consider two charged objects that are so tiny that

they can be modeled as point particles. If the
charges carried by the two objects are q1 and q2
and they are separated by a distance r, the
electric force between the objects can be written
as
1.3
The value of F in Equation 1.3 can be positive or
negative, depending on whether q1 and q2 are like
or unlike charges.
 so these two forms of Coulomb's law in its
slightly more complicated form in Equation 1.5 is
useful because other equations of
electromagnetism have simpler forms when
written in terms of Eo instead of k.

Important Features of Coulomb's Law

Important Features of Coulomb's law is s very similar
in form to Newton's universal law of gravitational.
Both laws exhibit a 1/r2 dependence on the
separation of the two participles. Therefore, a
negative charge can move in a circular orbit around a
positive charge, just like a planet orbiting the Sun, and
that was an early model for the hydrogen atom.
There is one very important difference between the
two forces: gravity is always an attractive force,
whereas the electric force in Coulomb's law can be
either attractive or repulsive
The value found for F in Equation 1.7 is so large that you may
be a little skeptical: if the electric force between two small
pieces of matter is this large,there must be manny staggering
consequences. For example, the electric forces acting within
ordinary matter, which contains both electrons and protons,
must be huge. Why don't these force dominate everyday life?
The resolution of this apparent paradox is that it is essentially
impossible to obtain a box containing only electrons and
protons. In fact, the term neutral means that the total charge is
zero. If our two boxes had contained equal numbers of
electrons and protons, thier total charges would have been Q
total = 0 and the force in Equation 1.7 would be zero.
Superposition of Electric Forces

let's now consider how to use Coulomb's law to

deal with more complicated charge
distributions. Suppose two particles of charge q1
and q2, are separated by a distance L as shown
in figure 1.5. What is the force on a third charge
q2 placed midway between these two charges?
We can deal with this problem by first using
Coulomb's law to find the force exerted by charge
q1 on q2 and then using Coulomb's law a second
time to calculate the force exerted by the charge
2q1 on q2. The total force on q2 is the sum of these
two separate contributions, which is an example of
the principle of superposition. In general the total
force on q2 is just the sum of the individual forces
exerted on q2 by all the other charges in the
problem. Because force is a vector, we must be
careful to add these forces as vectors.
 From Figure 1.5, the separation between q2 and q1
is L/2. Wrting Coulomb's law for this pair of
charges, we have

We can deal with the force from the charge 2q, in a

similar way. The separation of the charges is again L/2,
so, applying Coulomb's law (eq. 1.5), we find
Equation 1.9 gives the magnitude of the force F2. If
they are "like" charges (i.e, if q1 and q2 are both
positive or both negative so that the product q1q2 if
positive), the force F2 is in the -x direction.
The total force on q2 is the sum of equations 1.8 and 1.9,
but we must account for the direction (the sign) of each.
Assuming all the charges are are "like sign", the result is
The negative sign here tells us that if the
product q1q2 > 0 (consistent with our "like
sign" assumption), the force exerted on q2
is along the -x direction. This example leads
to the following strategy.
The electric field is vector- it has a
magnitude and a direction - and is
denoted by E. Figure 1.7 shows the
magnitude and direction of the
electric field near both a positive
and negative point charge. For a
positive point charge, the electric
field is directed radially outward
(fig. 1.7A), whereas for a negative
charge the electric field is directed
inward, toward the charge (fig.
1.7B).
Using a Test Charge to Measure

Consider a particular point in space where the

electric field is E (fig. 1.8). This field might be
produced by a point charge or by some other
arrangement of charges. If we now place a
charge q at this location, it experiences an
electric force givent by

(1.10)
The electric force is thus
either parallel to E (if q
is positive) or
antiparallel (if q is
negative). The charge q
in figure 1.8 (and eq.
1.10) is called a test
charge.
The electric field E is related to electric force by
equation 1.10, so we can use a Coulomb's law
calculation of the force to find the electric field in
many situations. For example, let's calculate the
electric field a distance r from the charge Q in
figure 1.8. Here q is the test charge, we want to
calculate the electric field produced by Q.
According to Coulomb's law, the magnitude of the
electric force exerted on the test charge q is
 Inserting this expression into our relation for
the electric field (eq. 1.10) gives

Which leads to
This result is the magnitude of the
electric field a distance r from a point
charge Q. The direction of Ê is along
the line that connects the charge
producing the field to the point where
the field is measured. The electric field
is directed outward away from Q when
Q is positive (as sketched in fig. 1.8)
and inward toward Q when Q is
negative.
Why Do We Need the Electric
Field?

The electric field of the point charge Q in

Figure 1.7A is always "there" even if there is
no second charge (or test charge) to
experience the electric force. Any charge or
collection of charges will produce an electric
field Ê. The magnitude and direction of Ê at a
particular location tells what would happen if
a charge were placed at that location, which
implies that the electric field exist even if
there were no test charge present to measure
it.
Electric Field Lines and the Inverse Square
Law

Two examples of electric field lines are given in parts

B and C of Figure 1.9. Part B shows the electric field
lines of a positive point charge (compare with Fig.
1.7A), and part C
Shows the electric field lines near a dipole. A plot of
electric field lines does not show the magnitude of
the field directly, but changes in field strength can
be inferred from the spacing of the field directly, but
changes in field strength can be inferred from the
spacing of the field lines. For example, the field lines
are most closely spaced near the charges in Figure
1.9B and C, where the magnitude of Ê is largest.
Regions where the field line spacing is large are
regions where the field is small.
According to Coulomb's law, the force between two
point chages falls off as 1/r². Where r is the separation
between the two charges. In a similar way, the electric
field produced by a point charge (Eq. 1.11) also varies as
1/r². The electric force thus obeys an inverse square
law.
An equivalent statement is
that because the field lines
emanating from Q spread out
in a three-dimensional space,
the area penetrated by any
given set of field lines grows as
r², thus reducing the density of
field lines by the same factor
as shown by the geometry in
Figure 1.10. The notion of field
lines thus explains why the
electric field of a point charge
follows an inverse square law.