coulombs law essay

coulombs law essay

The Importance of Coulomb’s Law in Understanding Electrical Interactions

1. Introduction to Coulomb’s Law

Coulomb’s Law is used to compute the magnitude of the force separating 2 electric charges. These could each be negative or positive. It’s as the moment we talk with regards to charges we are showing regarding a pushing pressure. The forces are definitely a container vector, which suggests that they feature both magnitude as well as direction. The forces here stand for repulsion if the charges possess the same sign and attraction if the charges hold opposite signs. This is actually the same for design as well as gravity forces, and so it’s simple to get the electric powers as well as magnetic forces mixed up. This formula is fundamentally the Newton’s second law of motion used to charges. This is definitely a scalar form which can solely serve to determine the magnitude of the forces. This is actually a vector type of the formula where F is the force on q1. This formula is genuinely helpful in the event that we receive a more complex system of lots of charges as we may figure out the net force on a singular charge. This is without a doubt very like mechanics issues. Step one is always to understand the problem. Then you require selecting the suitable coordinate system, employing Newton’s second law to every individual charge as well as at that point summing the forces through the system or substitution coming from one charge to another and also the force on a single charge to the force on a different charge.

Primarily, you should give a prolonged overview of Coulomb’s Law. Neither Robert Millikan nor the FAA would definitely demand this into the level shown below, nevertheless it would certainly exhibit a deeper understanding. This will also give you a great start to the record as it will soon drop you in at the center of the behavior.

The focus in this setting ought to be on content transmission, explaining concepts, or detailing various other techniques or units. Items are going to vary significantly according to the undertaking. This will definitely be the very first opportunity for you to reveal a handful of resistant components to the marker. This signifying that you should strive for a degree of formality in your crafting.

2. Explanation of the Mathematical Formula

Where the bar on the F indicates that it is a vector sum of all the forces. Taking q1 as the first charge and q2 as the second charge, we can write the force F12 on q2 due to q1 as a vector in the direction from q1 to q2. Now that we have fixed the direction of the force between the two charges, we can treat it as a one-dimensional problem by taking the vector in the direction of F12 as positive. We can apply the law of addition of scalar forces, erecting the force F12 first as positive, and then negative in different cases, using the subscripts to distinguish the different forces.

So what we want to do is find the force on a particular charge q2 due to each of the other charges and vector sum these forces to get the total force on q2. We can therefore write:

Given a system of point charges, the total force on a particular charge due to the others is the vector sum of the forces on it due to the individual charges. The force on a charge q2 due to another charge q1 is in the direction away from q1 if q1 and q2 are of the same sign (i.e. both positive or both negative), but towards q1 if q2 and q1 are of opposite sign.

The formula for Coulomb’s law can be derived from the principle of superposition and the fact that the force is a central force, and thus is radial in direction. The law of superposition basically states that the force on a particle is the vector sum of the forces on it due to the other particles.

3. Applications of Coulomb’s Law in Physics

Coulomb’s law can be used to provide a definition of electric field E. Since the electric force is a vector, it follows that the electric field is also a vector. The magnitude of E at any point in space is defined as the electric force on a small test charge divided by the magnitude of the test charge. This is similar to defining the gravitational field around a mass – a small mass placed in the field will experience a force. Electric field has the same units as force (newtons) since it is a force per unit charge (Coulomb). The direction of the electric field is the direction of the electric force that would be experienced by a small positive test charge placed in the field. This is an important point. The second very important aspect of E is that it is a ‘field’ – i.e. the space around a particle is affected by it so that another particle some distance away will experience a force. This force is like the force between two masses where one mass is influenced by the gravitational field due to the other mass. In this case we would calculate the electric force on a positive test charge due to the source charge and hence find the field. Then electric force on any particle can be found by multiplying the field by the charge on the particle. This is also analogous to finding the force on a particle in a gravitational field, so Coulomb’s law and electric field are very similar to Newton’s law of gravitation and gravitational field.

4. Real-life Examples of Coulomb’s Law in Action

How Coulomb’s law was related to the Titanic is in its early wireless telegraph technology that was used to communicate. When the ship was launched from England for America, the telegraph machine operator replaced the previously used telegraph equipment with a new Spark-Oscillation system due to its cost and supposed reliability. Though Spark-Oscillation was more efficient, it was more hazardous because of its spark. This was not known by the machine’s operator or anyone else on board. In using it on the ship, it had caused little sparks at intervals and built up a charge on the ship, making it a huge capacitor. This would explain why it had tipped off the Californian, in that the charge caused an electromagnetic field which had interfered with the ship’s controls. As the Titanic neared the Canadian ice region, there had been reports of other ships being in the area who had used Morse Code to communicate messages of warning. The electromagnetic interference had weakened the signal of the wireless operators from other ships and caused them not to thoroughly relay the messages. This made the final cause of the disaster when an attempted warning from a ship about the proximity of ice did not reach the operators and caused the Titanic to collide with an iceberg.

In 1912, the Titanic ship was sailing from the southern coast of England to a city in the United States of America, which we all know as New York. It was a relatively calm climate, and the great ship was easily crossing the Atlantic Ocean until it met the Canadian coastline and ran into an iceberg. The ship sank into the deepest depths of the ocean in less than 3 hours.

Titanic Disaster

5. Conclusion: Significance of Coulomb’s Law in Modern Science

In Equation 2, we define the vector r in terms of its magnitude and unit vector r^. Unlike in 3-dimensional algebra, it is often convenient in physics to use a 1-dimensional unit vector. The unit vector r^ points in the direction of r, so r^ = r/|r|. Equations 3 give the force on a charge q1 from another charge q2. Finally, Coulomb’s Law can be expressed in terms of the electric field E (→) created by a point charge. Steps (remember that E = F/q) starting with Equation 1 and substituting for F, we find using Equations 2 and 3 for r and F, the expression in Equation 4 for E. Taking the magnitude of E and comparing it to Equation 1, we obtain Equation 5, which defines the electric field. Using Equation 5 and specifying that the force is on a test charge q1 (hence F = q1E), we arrive at Equation 6, which is an alternate form for Coulomb’s Law in terms of the force between two point charges. These alternative methods for expressing Coulomb’s Law can be very useful for the purposes of calculating force vectors and making force field comparisons in different situations.

Equation 1 is the mathematical form for Coulomb’s law. In Equation 1, ε0 is a constant called the permittivity of free space. ε0 is one of several important constants in electricity and magnetism and should be memorized. It is a fundamental constant, independent of the type of material medium. Using a variety of methods, the most recent measurement of ε0 is 8.854187817… x 10^-12 C^2/Nm^2. The accuracy of the value of ε0 has long-range implications because it affects some of the fundamental underlying theory for electricity and magnetism in matter, though in most elementary situations one can assume vacuum conditions for the purpose of calculations without introducing significant errors. Step by the general trend in physics development, the SI unit system formulates the vacuum permittivity as a defined constant, so it is no longer defined in terms of experimental measured units. Equations 2 are the alternative methods for representing Coulomb’s Law.

Coulomb’s Law is among the most significant laws in all of physics in understanding electricity and magnetism in modern science. It is the foundation of electromagnetics. Coulomb’s Law gives the force between two point charges. The law is a vector law, so it gives the force direction as well as magnitude. The law can be written in two forms. One is in terms of the force and is useful when calculating the force between two charges. The other is in terms of the field and is useful for calculations involving continuous charge distributions.