Electric Charges and Fields - Comprehensive Notes

Electrostatics

The study of forces, fields, and potentials arising from static charges.

Electrified Objects

Objects with an excess or deficit of electrons, resulting in a net electric charge.

Gold-Leaf Electroscope

Device used to detect the presence and magnitude of electric charge.

Conductors

Materials that allow electric charges to move easily through them.

Insulators

Materials that resist the flow of electric charges.

Charge Conservation

The principle that the total electric charge in an isolated system remains constant.

Charge Quantization

The property that electric charge occurs in discrete multiples of the elementary charge e.

Coulomb's Law

The force between two point charges is directly proportional to the product of their charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

Superposition Principle

The principle that the net force on a charge due to multiple charges is the vector sum of the individual forces.

Electric Field Lines

A representation of the electric field using lines that indicate the direction and strength of the field.

Electric Dipole

A pair of equal and opposite charges separated by a distance.

Electric Flux

A measure of the electric field passing through a given area.

Electric Field

The electric field at a point is the force per unit charge that a positive test charge would experience if placed at that point.