SERWAY 23.27 A uniformly charged insulating rod of length 14.

0 cm is bent into the shape of a semicircle as shown in the figure. The rod has a total charge of -7.50 . !ind the magnitude and direction of the electric field at "# the center of the semicircle.

At this point, youre probably thinking WTF. Dont worry, its not that hard. Lets talk direction irst. !ut yoursel at point O. Look at the blue se"icircle. #nstead o thinking about the se"icircle as a continuous spread o negati$e charge, think o it as a bunch o indi$idual point charges, e$enly spaced along the se"icircle. The great thing here is that we ha$e a sy""etrical situation. Fro" the $antage point o O, there are %ust as "any negati$e point charges above as below. This "eans that the y co"ponents o all contributing &' ields will cancel out at point O. We only need to worry about the x co"ponents. (eeping in "ind the charge distribution is negati$e, the &' ield at point O will point to the le t, along the negati$e i'hat direction. )o, we$e got the directionality o this proble" sol$ed. *ow, lets tackle the "agnitude. Lets begin by looking at the unda"ental e+uation we always use to calculate the &' ield o a continuous charge distribution. #t looks like,
E = ke dq r$

#n this e+uation, dq represents a little tiny a"ount o negati$e charge, at so"e arbitrary location on the se"icircle. )ince we "ust per or" an integral with respect to dq, we need to irst con$ert it to so"ething that has spatial "eaning. -ow do we do this. First, lets igure out the linear charge density on this se"icircle. )ince there is a total a"ount o charge -7.50 spread e$enly across the se"icircle, and since the se"icircle has a total length o /0 c", then the linear charge density on this rod is,
=
Q 7.50 C C = = 5.%& 10 5 L 0.14m m

That little tiny a"ount o charge, dq, resides in a little tiny a"ount o arc length on that se"icircle. 1e"e"ber the de inition o arc length ro" last se"ester. 2ds ' rd3 We can relate the length o that little arc to the linear charge density to re'write our $ariable dq, dq = ds = rd , where r stands or the radius o the circle, and d stands or the little angle subtended by that little arc'length. *ow we$e para"eteri4ed dq in ter"s o spatial $ariables 5 so"ething o$er which we can integrate6

)o, now, i we consider the little a"ount o electric ield generated by the little charge dq 2the red $ector in the picture3, we can write its "agnitude as,
dq rd = ke $ r r$ 7ut, re"e"ber, we only care about the x co"ponent o this ield, so we "ust use so"e trigono"etry to deco"pose the red $ector into its co"ponent along the x a8is 2the teal $ector3. dE = k e dE x = k e

rd d sin = k e sin $ r r

*ow, to get the o$erall ield at O, we "ust integrate this e8pression with respect to .
E x = dE x =
Ex =

ke sin d r 0

ke k k $k e cos = e ( cos( ) cos( 0 ) ) = e ( 1 1) = r r r r 0

Ex =

$k e r

9kay, great6 This is the "agnitude o the electric ield. *ow, we need to know the radius o the se"icircle, which is easy to ind,
0.14m = r
r = 0.045m

)o, the magnitude o the &' ield at 9 is,

C $ ).(( 10 ( 5.%& 10 5 N m Ex = = $.14 10 7 0.045m C

1e"e"ber, we already igured out that this ield points only in the negati$e x direction, so the inal answer is,
N * EO = $.14 10 7 i C