Electrostatics- chapter 6 (grade 11)

What is electrostatic?

Electrostatics is the study of electrically charged objects

What are insulators and how are they charged?

Insulators (plastic, rubber or wool) can be charged by friction

What are conductors and how are they charged?

Conductors (metals) can be charged by making contact with another charged object

The law of conservation of charge:

States that charge cannot be created nor destroyed but can be transferred from one object to another

Coulomb’s law:

Two point charges in free space exert forces on each other. The force is directly proportional to the product of the charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the charges.

What are field lines?

Field lines are imaginery lines that show the direction and magnitude of an electric field at a point in the field

How do we define the magnitude of an electric field at a point?

The closer the lines are together, the stronger the field

What is an electric field?

A region in space in which an electric charge will experience a force

What is the direction of an electric field at a given point?

It’s the direction in which a small POSITIVE test charge would move if placed at that point

What is an electric field strength?

The magnitude of an electric field at a point if rh