Electrostatics

Notes

The following topics are covered in this chapter.

• Coulomb's Law
  • State Coulomb's law in words as the force between two charges is directly proportional to the product of the charges and inversely proportional to the distance between the charges squared
  • Know Coulomb's law can be represented mathematically as $F=\frac{k{q}_1{q}_2}{r^2}$ Solve problems using Coulomb's law to calculate the force between two charges
• (b) Electric Fields
  • Describe an electric field as a region of space in which an electric charge experiences a force. The direction of the electric field at a point is the direction that a positive test charge would move if placed at that point.
  • Draw electric field lines for various configurations of charges (point charges, two point charges, outside a charged hollow sphere, parallel plates)
  • Define the magnitude of the electric field at a point as the force per unit positive charge $E=\frac{F}{q}$  where E and F are vectors
  • Solve problems using $E=\frac{F}{q}$ (no parallel plates)
  • Calculate the electric field strength at a point due to a point charge, using the equation $E=\frac{kQ}{r^2}$  to determine the contribution to the field due to each charge (Convention: Q represents the charge responsible for the electric field. q represents the charge experiencing the electric field)
  • Determine the resultant electric field for a maximum of two charges