PH 106 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Permittivity, Electric Field, Test Particle
6 Apr 2016
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Coulomb"s constant is related to another fundamental constant that we will see more of shortly: (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1) k = 1 where e0 = 8. 85 x 10-12. So coulomb"s law also applies to uniform spherical charge distributions. The electric force, like the gravitational force, acts over a distance. It is useful to think of the electrical force arising from a force field, which we will call the electric field. Electric charges both produce and react to this electric field (cid:1) The electric field is defined as the force acting on small positive charge, divided by its charge: (cid:1) We can visualize the electric field with the electric field lines. To find the electric field lines for a positive charge, imagine moving a test charge all around it. You could do the same for a negative charge. In both cases, the field lines are radical (and in 3d)
