Electric Field introduction

THE ELECTRIC FIELD

Introduction

The presence of an electric charge produces a force on all other charges present. The electric force produces action-at-a-distance; the charged objects can influence each other without touching. Suppose two charges, q₁ and q₂, are initially at rest. Coulomb's law allows us to calculate the force exerted by charge q₂ on charge q₁ (see Figure 23.1). At a certain moment charge q₂ is moved closer to charge q₁. As a result we expect an increase of the force exerted by q₂ on q₁. However, this change can not occur instantaneous (no signal can propagate faster than the speed of light). The charges exert a force on one another by means of disturbances that they generate in the space surrounding them. These disturbances are called electric fields. Each electrically charged object generates an electric field which permeates the space around it, and exerts pushes or pulls whenever it comes in contact with other charged objects. The electric field E generated by a set of charges can be measured by putting a point charge q at a given position. The test charge will feel an electric force F. The electric field at the location of the point charge is defined as the force F divided by the charge q:



Figure 23.1. Electric force between two electric charges.

The definition of the electric field shows that the electric field is a vector field: the electric field at each point has a magnitude and a direction. The direction of the electric field is the direction in which a positive charge placed at that position will move. In this chapter the calculation of the electric field generated by various charge distributions will be discussed.