(There is, of course, a limit to that depending on the overall energy of the field.) This is essentially how a lightning rod works.they come to a point, so the lightning, which is a flow of charged particles, tends to be attracted more to that point. The sharper the point, the more intense in general. When they are represented by lines of force, or field lines, electric fields are depicted as starting on positive charges and terminating on negative. Field lines tend to congregate around points so the corners can be rather packed with field lines. If you are talking about a corner, all H*ll breaks loose. Electric fields are vectors, so we would want to know a direction.ĭepends on what you mean by "edges." Macroscopically, which is what I assume you are talking about (as opposed to quantum), when an electric field line meets a conductor the electric field is perpendicular to the conductor. One or two comments to add to finchie_88's post.Įquipotential lines mark the value of the electric potential, which is a scalar quantity, so we would expect no direction to be associated with it. i figure that the equipotential lines have no direction because they have no force acting on them at those points, i'm not too sure though.įor part 2, i know that between the plates the field is uniform and the strongest, so at the edge of the plates it becomes less intense and non-uniform?įor part 3, i know field lines go from + to - charges, but this is a plate and all the E lines radiate out from it, im not sure if they all just go into the negative charge or what the deal is really why is this?Ģ) what happens to the electric field near the edges of the plates?ģ) if you have a positively charged plate and place a negatively charged point charge above it, what does the electric field look like on them?įor part 1, i know that field lines have direction because it is an electric force acting in a certain direction, but im not too sure about this equipotential stuff. field lines show direction from the + to the - plate, but equipotential lines have no direction. A positive stationary charge has its electric field lines pointing radially away from it (perpendicular lines away from its surface, in all directions), and a negative stationary charge has its lines pointing radially towards it.1) in a parallel plate capacitor, we have field lines and equipotential lines. By definition, a positive charge in the force equation given above would experience a repulsive force (it would move away from the source of the field) and a negative charge would feel the attractive force.ĭue to this attractive/repulsive nature of electric fields, there is a notation for drawing them. However, there is one significant difference: gravitational fields are limited to attraction (pulling objects together) whereas electric fields can be either attractive or repulsive, depending on the charge of the object in the field. For complex charge distributions the electric field can have quite a few different relationships, see the figure gallery below (for a more complete discussion please see hyperphysics. If two lines did cross, then the force on a charge would have two. 3) Electric field lines starts from positive charge and end on a negative charge, so they do. Give answer whether the field was electric field or magnetic field. The beam follows a parabolic path after deflection. 2) A unit positive charge placed in the electric field tends to follow a path along the field line if it is free to do so. An electron beam was deflected in a given field which was perpendicular to the beam. The forces associated with each field also both fall off by an inverse square law, 1/r^2 in simple cases. Field lines point in the direction of the electric field E. Properties of Electric Lines of Force or Field Lines: 1) The Force Lines are only imaginary part, practically we cannot see them. The electric field can be looked at as analogous to a gravitational field in many ways, as massive objects are pulled towards each other in the presence of one another, just as charges are. Thus, when a charge is in the presence of an electric field it experiences a force causing the charged particle to move, which is given by rearranging the equation above so that: An electric field is defined as the force per unit charge, given by the equation: The electric field is one of the fundamental results of electromagnetism, created by a static (stationary) charge, or by a dynamic (changing in time) magnetic field.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |