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1 - Charges and Coulomb's Law: Electrostatics Notes

(1) The document discusses electrostatic forces and charges, including Coulomb's Law which states that the electrostatic force between two charges is directly proportional to the product of the charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. (2) It provides examples of insulators and conductors and how they gain or lose electrons when rubbed, leading to positive or negative charges. (3) The document also gives examples of electrostatic forces in everyday life and provides practice problems for calculating electrostatic forces between charges using Coulomb's Law.

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Marina Xu
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255 views3 pages

1 - Charges and Coulomb's Law: Electrostatics Notes

(1) The document discusses electrostatic forces and charges, including Coulomb's Law which states that the electrostatic force between two charges is directly proportional to the product of the charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. (2) It provides examples of insulators and conductors and how they gain or lose electrons when rubbed, leading to positive or negative charges. (3) The document also gives examples of electrostatic forces in everyday life and provides practice problems for calculating electrostatic forces between charges using Coulomb's Law.

Uploaded by

Marina Xu
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Electrostatics Notes

1 – Charges and Coulomb’s Law


Ancient Greeks discovered that if amber (fossilized sap) is rubbed it will attract small objects. This is similar to
when you run a comb through your hair…it will then attract bits of lint or dust. WHY?!?

Clearly this attraction is due to some FORCE at work. In this case it is electrostatic force which exists between
electrically charged objects.

Conductors are materials that… Insulators are materials that…

A negative charge is caused by… A positive charge is caused by…

It is possible to build up a charge on insulators because electrons cannot…

When a vinyl strip is rubbed with fur or wool the rod gains an excess of electrons and therefore is
________________. If an acetate strip is rubbed with silk then it will lose electrons and become ________________.

Two charged vinyl strips Two charged acetate strips One charged vinyl and one
charged acetate strip

The Law of Charges states:

(1)

(2)

(3)

But what about that so-called amber effect? Why are seemingly uncharged objects attracted to charged amber
(or combs for that matter)?

It has to do with something called…


Consider a rubber balloon that has been rubbed on someone’s hair and a tin can.

Note that the electrons on the can…

Other examples of electrostatic charges in everyday life include:


(1)

(2)

(3)

Ok enough playing around, where’s the formulas?!?

Coulomb determined that the force between two charged objects is proportional to their charges and inversely
proportional to the square of their distances or:

Where: q1 =
q2 =
r =
k =

There are two important things to notice from this equation.


First, this equation is quite similar to…

Second, electrostatic forces are much stronger than gravitational forces.

There is a very important difference between gravitational and electrostatic forces:


Gravity ALWAYS…
Electrostatic force can…

When solving for electrostatic forces we will NOT…

Instead we will determine the direction of the force based on…


Example: Example:
Two 85 kg students are 1.0 m apart. What is the Two point charges of 1.8x10-6 C and 2.4x10-6 C
gravitational force between them? produce a force of 2.2x10-3 N on each other. How
far apart are these two charges?

If these two students each have a charge of 2.0x10-3 C,


what is the electrostatic force between them?

Example:
A charge of 1.7x10-6 C is placed 2.0x10-2 m from a charge of 2.5x10-6 C and 3.5x10-2 m from a charge of -2.0x10-6
as shown.

1.7x10-6 C 2.5x10-6 C -2.0x10-6 C

What is the net electric force on the 1.7x10-6 charge?

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