Ian Chaffin

Derek Racine

January 16, 2012

2-5 p.m. lab section

Potential Plotting

Abstract

The purpose of this lab was to illustrate the relationship between electric

field and potential, specifically in regard to their graphical representations. By

examining the electric field and potential of various charge distributions we showed

how the field and potential differed with the different distributions.

Introduction Questions

Before describing the physics of the actual experiment, we must answer

some general questions about the physics behind and electric fields and potential.

1. When measuring the electric field of some charge, why can we ignore the

effects of the field created by a test charge?

a. We assume that the configuration of charges are static, and as a result

the test charge is just a probe that we use as a measuring device to

determine the force at some point in the E field.

2. When using test charges, why must q be much smaller than the charge creating

the field?

a. When choosing the size of our measuring device we must be careful to

make the absolute value of the test charge small compared to the

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 source charge so that it does not disturb the field we are trying to

measure.

3. Why do we use the ratio of F to q rather than simply the value of F to describe

the magnitude of the electric field?

a. The electric field describes the force exerted by a source charge and it

must be F/q, since F is the force between two charges. By dividing the

force by q, you get the electric field that describes what the force

would be at some distance due to a single charge.

4. Why is potential equal to the ratio, Work/charge, rather than simply Work?

a. This answer is similar to the past three questions. In this relation we

want the voltage to describe the work per unit charge, thus we divide

by charge.

5. Why are electric field lines always orthogonal to equipotential surfaces?

a. Since E = -grad() it is clear that when graphing both quantities, the

two will be perpendicular at all intersections simply by the definition

of the gradient.

6. Why do we use V instead of V when relating potential to electric field?

a. The answer comes down to the fundamental relationship between E

and V where E= -(dV/dx, dV/dy, dV/dz). Switching to polar

coordinates we can describe E as dV/dr or V/r. It then becomes

clear that E corresponds to V or the change in potential rather than

merely V.

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 Introduction

The physics for this lab is fairly simple. It follows a few important relations:

electric field lines point from high to low potential, electric field inside an

electrostatic conductor is zero, and equipotential lines are always perpendicular to

electric field lines. When we ran current through the conducting ink we created

electric field and potential for each of the different shapes we created.

Method

In order to explore the concept of electric potential we plotted the potential

for various charge distributions. We drew different shapes with white conducting

ink on black conducting paper and then connected a power source to the conducting

ink. We then measured the measured the potential at different points on the paper

with a voltmeter to determine what the equipotential lines looked like. We did this

for 5 charge distributions.

1. Parallel Lines

a. In this distribution the electric field from flows down from the top line

(positive) to the bottom line (negative).

b. In between the lines the potential is illustrated through horizontal

equipotential lines that decrease in value as you move down the page.

c. The potential difference between these lines is 20V

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2. Concentric Circles

a. In this set up the field and potential are zero inside the inner circle

since there is no source of charge there. The area in between the two

circles however has field and potential due to the charge on the

surface of the inner circle.

b. The potential difference between the surface of the inner circle and

the surface of the outer circle was 20 V.

c. The field lines point radially outward from the positively charge inner

circle to the negatively charged outer circle. The potential lines are

circular and everywhere orthogonal to the E field.

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3. Circle Between Two Parallel Lines

a. Here we have the same configuration as the first, except we put a

circle in between the two lines. The field and potential are symmetric

about a horizontal centerline.

b. The equipotential lines are ellipses in this plot with fields flowing

from the circle to the two lines

c. The field inside the circle is zero, and illustrates Faradays Cage.

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4. Triangle and a line

a. This arrangement is quite different from the others since it has

corners. But the equipotential lines at these points are simply more

drastic curves.

b. The E field flows from the triangle (charge +) to the (charge -) line.

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 5. Pear and a line

a. In this final distribution we find that Faradays cage also applies to

odd shaped enclosures like the triangle above and the pear below.

In general the method for all of these configurations was the same. Using a

voltmeter we looked for equipotential lines around and inside each object until we

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found the general shape of the lines. We then plotted the electric field for the

distribution and plotted the potential over it.

Data and Analysis

The data taken in this lab was various equipotential values for the different

charge distributions.

Parallel Lines Circle and two Lines Pear and a Line

2.25 V 1.38 V 3.62 V
4.37 V 3.75 V 8.85 V
6.28 V 6.20 V 13.23 V
8.04 V 8.49 V
10.45 V
12.44 V
14.74 V

These numbers are the values of each equipotential line drawn in the graphs above

for the parallel lines, circle and two lines, and the pear and line examples. These tell

us what value of potential we are at on the graph. From this we can understand the

direction of the electric field, since it always points from high to low potential.

Results

The only thing this data tells us is the potential difference between each point

we plotted. However even this simple data was soiled by our error. The biggest

problem we faced was that the conducting ink did not conduct current effectively so

the charge far from the power source decreased. Thus when we measured the

potential at each point far from the power source the total potential difference

measured less than what it should have been. In the Parallel Lines example, we

should have measured a 20 V difference but instead we measured 14.74 V. We

combated this by measuring the total potential difference at a certain distance from

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the power source and then took all of our measurements of the different potentials

at that distance from the power source. We then took the ratio of the actual total

potential difference with measured total potential difference between the two

parallel lines (20V / 17.86V). Multiplying each measurement of potential by this

ratio we reduced the effect of bad conducting ink on our measurements.

Conclusion

By repeating the process described in the Analysis section for each of the

distributions we made our data slightly more reasonable, but in the end the error

due to the manner in which we found the equipotentials and the impreciseness of

our hand made drawings rendered our data useless. The labs goal however was not

to gather precise and accurate data, but to provide an understanding of how

potential is plotted for odd shaped charge distributions, and this goal was achieved.