PHY 1101: Electricity and Magnetism

Electric Charges and Fields

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Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Electric Charges and Fields

→ Electric charge is one of the most fundamental quantities in physics. As such, it cannot be defined — it can only
be described.

→ Electric charge is a property of particles: demonstrates itself through interaction.

→ This interaction occurs between charged particles at a distance, without actual contact as in the case of
mechanical interaction. As a result of the interaction, forces appear.

→ An electric charge is a physical property of electrons and protons in the atoms of matter that gives rise to forces
between atoms.

→ Charge — The fundamental electrical property to which mutual

attractions or repulsions between electrons or protons is attributed.
Neutral atoms contain equal numbers of positive protons and
negative electrons.

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Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Electric Charges and Fields

→ Charging — process of removing or adding electrons. → What would be the charges on the following objects:

Conduction — direct contact A rubber rod rubbed with fur (hair) Negative

Induction — indirect contact A glass test tube rubbed with silk Positive

A PVC pipe rubbed with nylon Negative

Conduction — direct contact

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Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Electric Charges and Fields

Induction — indirect contact

→ The charge is measured in coulomb [C]. The charge of a proton is arbitrarily chosen as positive and has the value
of 1.601 × 10−19 C, whereas the charge of an electron is chosen as negative with a value of −1.601 × 10−19 C.

→ The electric charges obey the principle of conservation (i.e., charges cannot be created or destroyed).
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Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Electric Charges and Fields

→ The total charge in an isolated system never changes. Isolation means

no matter is allowed to cross the boundary of the system.

→ For instance, light pass into or out of the system, since the “particles” of
light (photons), carry no charge at all.

→ A thin-walled box in a vacuum exposed to gamma rays might become

the scene of a “pair-creation” event in which a high-energy photon ends
its existence with the creation of an electron and a positron (Fig. 1.1).

→ Two electrically charged particles have been newly created, but the net
change in total charge, in and on the box, is zero.

→ The creation of a positively charged particle without the simultaneous

creation of a negatively charged particle: such an occurrence has never
been observed.
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Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Electric Charges and Fields

→ The charge conservation law:

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Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Electric Charges and Fields

→ The electric charges we find in nature come in units of one magnitude only, equal to the amount of charge carried
by a single electron. We denote the magnitude of that charge by e. (sign −e).

→ The positron carries precisely that amount of charge, as it must if charge is to be conserved when an electron and
a positron annihilate, leaving nothing but light.

→ Exact equality: charges carried by all other charged particles. The equality, for instance, of the positive charge on
the proton and the negative charge on the electron.
14 e
→ Ordinary matter is made up of atoms that have positively charged nuclei and negative
charged electrons surrounding them. (another proof of equality)
Si
→ The magnitude of the charge one proton or electron is called the elementary charge “e”. 14 P
14 N
→ Charge is quantized as a multiple of the electron or proton charge:
Proton charge: e = 1.601 × 10−19 C
Electron charge: e = -1.601 × 10−19 C
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Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Electric Charges and Fields

→ Charge is quantized – quantized means there is a base amount that can’t be further subdivided (i.e., the electron)

→ Quantization of charge implies that charge can assume only certain discrete values.

→ The observed value of electric charge (q) of a particle will be integral multiples of (e) 1.6×10−19 coulombs.

→ Mathematically,
q = ne where n = 0,1,2,.... ( n is an integer (positive or negative))

→ Charge is measured in units called coulombs (C). A coulomb of charge is a very large charge. In electrostatics we
therefore often work with charge in micro-coulombs (1 μC = 1×10−6 C) and nanocoulombs (1 nC = 1×10−9 C).

→ Problem: An object has an excess charge of 4.8 μC. How many electrons does it have?

→ Solution:

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 Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Electric Charges and Fields

→ The interaction between electric charges at rest is described by Coulomb’s law: two stationary electric charges
repel or attract one another with a force proportional to the product of the magnitude of the charges and inversely
proportional to the square of the distance between them.

In vector form:

Here, q1 and q2 are the magnitude (scalars),

21 is the unit vector in the direction from charge 1 to charge 2, and

F2 is the force acting on charge 2.

→ The Eq. (1.1) expresses, the fact that like charges repel and unlike charges attract. Also, the force obeys Newton’s
third law; that is, F2 = −F1.

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Note: The laws of classical electromagnetism work over long distances.
Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Electric Charges and Fields

→ The constant k is known as Coulomb’s constant.

→ If two charges are equal (1 C) and separated by a distance of 1 m, then the force is 8.988×109 newtons.

→ In other words, k is given by

[Approximately 9×109 Nm2/C2]

→ Instead of k, it is customary to introduce a constant ε0 which is defined by

→ Coulomb’s law in terms of ε0 takes the form

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Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Electric Charges and Fields

→ A question: Coulomb’s law is really only a definition?

→ After all, if we had only two charges in the world to experiment with, q1 and q2,
we could never measure them separately. We could verify only that F is
1
proportional to ᵅ 2 .
21

→ The significant physical content is the statement of inverse-square dependence

and the implication that electric charge is additive in its effect.

→ The electrical interactions if you have more than two charges…superposition

→ The force with which two charges interact is not changed by the presence of a
third charge.

→ With the three charges in Fig. 1.3 occupying any positions whatsoever, the
force on any one of them, such as q3, is given by

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 Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Electric Charges and Fields

→ What happens when you lift an object against gravity? Gravitational force..

→ Conservative forces: gravitational force or force exerted by a spring. Conservative force doesn’t depend on the
path taken but depends on the initial and final position. It is independent of the path taken and reversible.

→ The total work done on a mass does not depend on the path taken by the mass or object.

→ Work done by a conservative force is equal to the change in potential energy. 12

Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Electric Charges and Fields

→ Energy is a useful concept here because electrical forces are conservative. When you push charges around in
electric fields, no energy is irrecoverably lost. Everything is perfectly reversible.

→ Let us start with two charged bodies or particles very far apart from one
another, carrying charges q1 and q2 (Fig. 1.4(a)).

→ How much work does it take to bring the particles slowly together until the
distance between them is r12? [Interaction occurs; Fig. 1.4(b)]

→ The force that has to be applied to move one charge toward the other is
equal and opposite to the Coulomb force. Therefore,

- Note that because r is changing from ∞ to r12, the differential dr is negative.

- The displacement and applied force are negative: positive work being done. 13
Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Electric Charges and Fields

→ Let us bring the third charge q3 and move it to a point P3 whose distance
from charge 1 is r31, and from charge 2, r32. The work required to affect this
will be

→ Due to the additivity of electrical interactions, we can write,

→ That is, the work required to bring q3 to P3 is the sum of the work
needed when q1 is present alone and that needed when q2 is present
alone:

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Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Electric Charges and Fields

→ The total work done in assembling this arrangement of three charges, which we shall call U, is therefore

→ Note that q1, q2, and q3 appear symmetrically in the expression above, though q3 was brought in last. Same
result would appear if q3 had been brought in first. Thus, U is independent of the order in which the charges were
assembled.

→ Since it is independent of the route by which each charge was brought in, U must be a unique property of the
final arrangement of charges. We may call it the electrical potential energy of this particular system.

→ When we can say that the potential energy is zero?

→ Answer is, if the three charges already in existence are infinitely far apart from one another. Note that the
potential energy belongs to the configuration as a whole.

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Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Electric Charges and Fields

→ Summing over all pairs yield

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Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Electric Charges and Fields

→ Let’s generalized to apply to any number of charges.

→ If we have N different charges, in any arrangement in space, the potential energy of the system is calculated by
summing over all pairs, just as in Eq. (1.13).

→ The sum over pairs is this:

→ The zero of potential energy, as in that case, corresponds to all charges far apart.

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Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Electric Charges and Fields

→ Basically, crystal lattice structure is a repeating three-dimensional pattern of

atoms or groups of atoms in a crystal.

→ Example: NaCl, as it has an arrangement of positive ions (Na+) and negative

ions (Cl−) alternating in a regular three-dimensional array or lattice.

Na+ Cl-

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Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Electric Charges and Fields

→ The electrostatic potential energy of the lattice of charges plays an important role in the explanation of the
stability and cohesion of the ionic crystal. We want to estimate the magnitude.

→ To evaluate the potential energy, we first observe that every positive ion is in a position equivalent to that of
every other positive ion. Also, the arrangement of positive ions around a negative ion is exactly the same as the
arrangement of negative ions around a positive ion, and soon.

→ Hence, we may take one ion in the center, then sum over its interactions with all the others, and simply multiply
by the total number of ions of both kinds.

→ This reduces the double sum in Eq. (1.15) to a single sum and a factor N; we must still apply the factor ½ to
compensate for including each pair twice. That is, the energy of a NaCl lattice composed of a total of N ions is

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Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Electric Charges and Fields

→ Taking the positive ion at the center as in Fig.1.7(b), our sum runs over
all its neighbors near and far. The leading terms start out as follows:

→ The first term comes from the 6 nearest chlorine ions, at distance a, the
second from the 12 sodium ions on the cube edges, and so on.

→ The numerical evaluation of such a series is easily accomplished with a

computer. The answer in this example happens to be

Here N, the number of ions, is twice the

number of NaCl molecules.

→ The negative sign shows that work would have to be done to take the crystal apart (at a distance) into ions. In
other words, the electrical energy helps to explain the cohesion of the crystal.
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Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Electric Charges and Fields

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Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Electric Charges and Fields

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Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Electric Charges and Fields

Let’s consider that the electric field points

away from a positive source.

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Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Electric Charges and Fields

dθ

θ E cosθ θ r

E Radius of the ring = r sinθ

θ
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Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Electric Charges and Fields

→ The electric field due to the

hemisphere is vertical.

→ Rotate the system by 1800 around the

symmetry axis.

→ The E is upward to the left and upward

to the right. This is a contradiction.

→ The only way to avoid this

contradiction is for the field to point along
the symmetry axis, because in that case it
doesn’t change under the rotation.

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Electric Charges and Fields

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Electric Charges and Fields

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Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Electric Charges and Fields

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Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Electric Charges and Fields

→ Field lines due to charges located outside will cross the surface first while ''going in'' and then, while ''going out'',
and hence, net flux through the closed surface S will be zero.
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Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Electric Charges and Fields

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Electric Charges and Fields

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Electric Charges and Fields

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Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Course Contents

Electric Charges and Fields: Electric Charge, Conservation of Charge, Quantization of Charge, Coulomb’s Law,
Energy of a System of Charges, Electrical Energy in a Crystal Lattice, The Electric Field, Charge Distributions, Flux,
Gauss’s Law, Field of a Spherical Charge Distribution, Field of a Line Charge, Field of an Infinite Flat Sheet of
Charge.
Electric Potential: Electric Potential and Electric Potential Energy, Equipotential Surfaces, Calculating the Potential
from the Field, Potential Due to a Charged Particle, Potential Due a Group of Charged Particles, Potential Due to an
Electric Dipole, Potential Due to a Continuous Charge Distribution, Calculating the Field from the Potential, Electric
Potential Energy of a System of Charged Particles.
Electric Fields around the Conductors: Conductors in the Electrostatic Field, The General Electrostatic Problem
and the Uniqueness Theorem, Image Charges, Capacitance and Capacitors, Calculating the Capacitance, Capacitors
in Parallel and Series, Energy Stored in an Electric Field, Capacitor with Dielectrics and Gauss’s Law.

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Lecture 01 to 05 PHY 1101
Course Contents

Magnetic Fields: What Produces a Magnetic Field, Vector potential, Crossed Fields: Discovery of the Electron,
Crossed Fields: The Hall Effect, A Circulating Charged, Cyclotrons and Synchrotrons, Magnetic Force on a Current-
Carrying Wire, Torque on a Current Loop, The Magnetic Dipole Moment.
Magnetic Fields Due to Currents: Calculating the Magnetic Field Due to a Current, Force between Two Parallel
Currents, Biot-Savart Law, Ampere’s Law, Solenoids and Toroids, Magnetic Dipole.
Electromagnetic Induction: Induction and Inductance, Faraday’s Law of Induction, Lenz’s Law, Induction and
Energy Transfers, Induced Electric Fields, Inductors and Inductance, Self-Induction, Energy Stored in a Magnetic
Field, Energy Density of a Magnetic Field, Mutual Induction.

• Electricity and Magnetism, 3rd Edition, Edward M. Purcell and David J. Morin, Cambridge University Press.
• Fundamentals of Physics, Volume 2, 10th Edition, David Halliday, Robert Resnick and Jearl Walker, Wiley.
• University Physics with Modern Physics, 15th Edition, Hugh D. Young and Roger A. Freedman, Pearson.
• Fundamentals of Physics II, R. Shankar, Yale University Press.
• Physics for Scientists and Engineers, 9th Edition, Raymond A. Serway and John W. Jewett, Cengage
Learning.
• Physics for Scientists & Engineers with Modern Physics, 4th Edition, Douglas C. Giancoli, Pearson.
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