ELECTROSTATICS - 1

Charges and charging

 Contents
1. Charge ………………. 3 Vector form of law … 21
2. Where does charge Dielectric constant .. 23
come from? .............. 7 Superposition …… 28
 Prop of charges …… 8 Electric field ….. 35
Types of charging …. 9 Electric field lines … 40
Charging by contact … 10 Continuous charge ... 54
Charging by induction..15 Electric dipole…… 66
Walter Lewin video …16 Torque ………… 67
Coulomb’s law …………… 17 Intensity – dipole …. 72

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 Charge
Electric Charge
Electric charge is a fundamental property associated
with elementary particles. It accompanies fundamental
particles whenever that exists. Electron, proton,
neutrons are a few examples of fundamental particles.
According to William Gilbert,
The charge is something possessed by material
objects that make it possible for them to exert
electrical forces and to respond to electrical force.

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 Charge…..
Charges are of two kinds
(i) negative charge
(ii) positive charge
In an atom electron are particles having a
negative charge. The nucleus consists of
protons and neutrons. In a nucleus of an
atom, protons have a positive charge and
neutrons are neutral.

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 Charges….
Assignment of a negative charge on the electron
and a positive charge on a proton is only a
convention. 
SI unit of charge is Coulomb written as C.

 Charge on electron is 

 and charge on proton is positive of this value.

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Experiments lead to the fundamental results that :

(1) like charges (2) unlike charges

repel, attract

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Where does charge come from?
The electric charge on a body comes as a result of transferring
of electrons from one body to another. This way one body has
an excess and the other a deficiency of electrons.
Electrons are very small particles that have a negative charge.
Sir J.J. Thomson discovered electrons.

To give a body an excess negative charge, we may add

some electrons. And to give an excess of positive charge,
we may remove the electrons from the body.

It is important to note here that the “Charge” of a body refers
to its excess charge only. 

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Properties of charges
(i) Additivity of charges
Charges adds up like real numbers i. e., they are Scalars . More clearly if any
system has n number of charges 

(ii) Conservation of charge :

Charge is conserved Charge of an isolated system is conserved. Charge can not
be created or destroyed but charged particles can be created or destroyed.
(iii) Quantization of charge
All free charges are integral multiples of a unit of charge ‘e’, Thus charge q on a
body is always denoted by
q = ne where n = any integer positive or negative

………………………………………………………….Courtesy physicscatalyst.com
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 1. By friction

Types of charging
2. By conduction
3. By induction

Charging means gaining or losing electron. Matters can be charged with three ways,
charging by friction, charging by contact and charging by induction.
Charging by Friction
When you rub one material to another, they are charged by friction. Material losing
electron is positively charged and material gaining electron is negatively charged. Amount
of gained and lost electron is equal to each other. In other words, we can say that charges of
the system are conserved. When you rub glass rod to a silk, glass lose electron and
positively charged and silk gain electron and negatively charged.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Charging by conduction/contact
Charging by Contact
There are equal numbers of electrons and protons in a neutral matter.
If something changes this balance we can say it is charged. Look at the
following picture below on the left
 
 
 
 
 
In this picture, negatively charged rod touches to the neutral sphere
and some of the electrons pass to the sphere. As a result neutral
sphere is charged by contact. If the rod is positively charged, then
some of the electrons of sphere pass to the rod and when we separate
them, sphere becomes positively charged. Picture on the right shows
the flow of electrons from sphere to the rod.
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Charging by conduction/contact…
1. When charged object touches an identical neutral object, they
both have same charge.(for conductors)
2. When two charged bodies touch each other, total charge of the
system is conserved and they share the total charge according to
their capacities. If they have same amount of different charges,
when we touch one another they become neutral. If the amount of
charges is different then, after flow of charge they are both
negatively or positively charged. Having opposite charges after
contact is impossible.
3. If the touching objects are spheres, they share the total charge
according to their radii, because their capacities are directly
proportional to their radius. When the spheres are identical then
they share total charge equally.
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Charging by contact…..
4. We can find the charge per radius by the following
equation;
 
 
Then we use following equation to find the charge per
spheres having radii r1 and r2;

 
 

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 Concept test
Charges spheres having radius 3r,2r,r have
different charges. If we touch the three sphere to
each other, find the final charges of the spheres.

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Solution

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 Courtesy Physicstutorials.org
Charging by induction

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 Coulomb’s law…..
In Summary we can say :
Coulomb’s law states that the force of interaction
between two charges placed in vacuum, is directly
proportional to the product of the two charges and
inversely proportional to the square of the distance
between them.

Note *A charge creating a field is called source charge and a

charge placed in this field is called a test charge. A test charge
responds to the source field with a force towards the source
charge due to attraction or away from it due to repulsion.

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Graphs-Coulomb’s Law
F F Force of repulsion
Force of repulsion

R 1/R
R
1/R
Force of attraction
Force of attraction
F
F

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Validity of Coulomb's law
Charges are considered point charges
The charges are assumed stationary

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Coulomb Force in vacuum and medium

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Dielectric Constant (or Relative Permittivity)

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Concept test Question

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 Superposition principle
Principle of Superposition of forces:
“The principle of superposition states that
every charge in space creates an electric
force on a charge placed at a point,
independent of the presence of other
charges in that medium and the resultant
electric force is a vector sum of the
electric force due to individual charges. ”

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Example problem for superposition

This video gives an example of superposition of forces.

 So we see that the forces between two charges are

equal in magnitude but opposite in direction, they act
on two different charges and they are simultaneous
forces. Hence they form an Action – Reaction pair.
They are also central forces and conservative forces.

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Use this simulation to get comfortable with
Coulomb’s Law

https://ophysics.com/em1.html

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Electric field
and
Electric field lines
Electric Field:-

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Vector form of electric field due to a
point charge

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 Reading an equation
=+ and

=-
When a charge (q) is placed in an electric field (E), it
experiences a force F, given by the above equation.
1. magnitude of the force is q times E and
2. direction of the force is
the same as the field for a positive test charge but
Opposite to the field for a negative test charge.

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 Electric field lines
For any given location, the arrows point in the
direction of the electric field and their length is
proportional to the strength of the electric field at that
location. Such vector arrows are shown in the diagram
below. Note that the lengths of the arrows are longer
when closer to the source charge and shorter when
further from the source charge.

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 Lines of electric force
A more useful means of visually representing the
vector nature of an electric field is through the use of
electric field lines of force.  As such, the lines are
directed away from positively charged source charges
and toward negatively charged source charges.
Direction of a field line is given by a tangent drawn
to a line of force

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 Electric field lines……
Look at the density closer to the source charge and
farther away from it.

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 Electric field lines properties…
Electric field lines, point in the direction that a positive test
charge would accelerate if placed upon the line.
Properties:
1. The electric lines of force emanate from a positive
charge and terminate on a negative charge
2. the lines of force are perpendicular to the surfaces
of objects at the locations where the lines connect
to object's surfaces.
3. A tangent at any point on the line gives the
direction of the electric field .

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 Electric field lines properties
4. Electric field lines should never cross.  If the lines
cross each other at a given location, then there must
be two distinctly different values of electric field
with their own individual direction at that given
location. This could never be the case

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 Electric field lines properties…
5. Line density in an electric field line pattern reveals
information about the strength or magnitude of an
electric field. More the density , greater the strength

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field pattern for pairs of charges

Superposition for two like charges is shown

Step 1 Step 2……..

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Superposition for two like charges
The resultant field pattern is now drawn

Step 3
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 Field patterns ………
Below is a pattern for unlike charges of equal magnitude
as well as for a pair of negative charges

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 Field patterns.
Pattern for pairs of charges of different magnitude

Coutesy ……..www.physicsclassroom.com
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 Uniform Electric Field
Till now all examples were for non-uniform electric
fields. A uniform electric field is like the one found
between the plates of a capacitor

An infinite plane sheet is another example of a

uniform field

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Simulation to see the evolving field lines

https://phet.colorado.edu/sims/htm
l/charges-and-fields/latest/charges-a
nd-fields_en.html

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Concept test

Rank A, B, C in order of increasing magnitude of

electric field intensity
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Concept test Question

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Answer:
Equal as…..
The presence of the charges will induce
charges on the cube of the opposite kind.
The net field in the cube will be zero.
But the presence of these charges will not
affect the force between the two charges
as we see in the case of superposition.

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Electric Dipole ……
•An electric dipole is a pair of equal and opposite
point charges q and –q, separated by a distance 2l.
The line connecting the two charges defines a
direction in space.
•By convention, the direction from –q to q is said to
be the direction of the dipole moment
The mid-point of locations of –q and q is called the
centre of the dipole. Magnitude of p = q x 2l

An ideal dipole is one S.I unit of dipole moment is Cm

in which charge
becomes larger and
larger and distance 2l
-q q
becomes smaller and
smaller Electrostatics -1 p 63
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 qE
E
q
-q

- qE

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Case 1 p

If is angle between Dipole moment

vector and Electric field , then by Right hand
Screw Rule a clockwise rotation results.
Torque is into the plane of the paper
No Translation.
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 Case 2 -q

If is angle between Dipole moment

vector and Electric field , then by Right hand
p Screw Rule an anti clockwise rotation results.
Torque is out of the plane of the paper.
No Translation

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In this non- uniform electric field, field is increasing towards right,
which is indicated by crowding of field lines. So magnitude of force
on ‘+q’ (qE2 ) is greater than the force on ‘–q’ (-qE1 ) as E2 > E1.
So net force 0. Hence, both rotation and translation take place.
+q qE2

-q
-qE1

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Electric field intensity along the
axial line of an electric dipole.
A O B Ea P E
b

-q q E = E –E
l l
b a

Consider a dipole of length ‘2l’ and with charge q.

ABP is its axial line. Let P be a point on it at a
distance ‘x’ from ‘o’ the centre of the dipole

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Axial line intensity… 2l
A O B Ea P E
b
q
-q x

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 Electric field intensity along the
equatorial line of an electric dipole.
E
b

Q
E
q

E sin
b E
a
E cos
b

E cos
a

A B
E sin
a q
-q O
l l
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Dipole Equatorial field intensity...

E
b

Q
E
q

E
a

A B

-q O q

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Dipole Equatorial field intensity...
E
b

Q
E
q

E
a

A B

-q O q

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 Problems for electric field
The Electric Field Lines Interactive in the
https://www.physicsclassroom.com/Physics-Interactiv
es/Static-Electricity/Electric-Field-Lines
gives a feel of the field patterns.Test it out.
Principle of superposition is applied for net field due
to a discrete charge distribution similar to the
treatment we used for electric force. See video1. An
example is solved in video2
For examples of continuous charge distribution
see the video1 , video2 and video3.

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Electric field near a line of charge…

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Electric field near a line of charge….

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Electric field near a line of charge…

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Electric field near a line of charge…

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Electric field near a line of charge…..

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Electric field near a line of charge…

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Electric field near a line of charge…..

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Electric field near a line of charge.

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