Applied Physics - PHYS- 1121

Electric Charge
Coulomb’s Law
Electric Charge

• Electric charge (symbol q, sometimes Q) is the physical

property of matter that causes it to experience a force when
placed in electromagnetic field (The field at any point in space
and time can be regarded as a combination of an electric
field and a magnetic field).
• Electric charge can be positive or negative. Like charges repel each
other and unlike charges attract each other. An object with no net
charge is referred to as electrically neutral.
• Electric charge is a conserved property; the net charge of an isolated
system, the quantity of positive charge minus the amount of negative
charge, cannot change.
• Electric charge is carried by subatomic particles. In ordinary matter,
negative charge is carried by electrons, and positive charge is carried by the
protons in the nuclei of atoms.
If there are more protons than electrons in a piece of matter, it will have a
positive charge, if there are fewer it will have a negative charge, and if there
are equal numbers it will be neutral.
• Charge is quantized; it comes in integer multiples of individual small
units called the elementary charge, e, about 1.602×10−19 C, which is the
smallest charge that can exist freely.
• Particles called quarks have fractional electric charge values – either –
1 2
(− 𝑒) or (+ 𝑒), but they are found only combined in particles that have
3 3

a charge that is an integer multiple of e.

• Charge is an absolutely conserved quantum number. The proton has a
charge of +e, and the electron has a charge of −e.
• Electric charges produce electric fields. A moving charge also produces
a magnetic field. The interaction of electric charges with an electromagnetic field
(a combination of an electric and a magnetic field) is the source of
the electromagnetic force, which is one of the four fundamental
interactions in physics.
• The SI derived unit of electric charge is the coulomb (C) named after French
physicist Coulomb.
• In electrical engineering it is also common to use the ampere-hour (A⋅H).
In physics and chemistry it is common to use the elementary charge (e) as a unit.
Chemistry also uses the Faraday constant, which is the charge of one mole of
elementary charges.
• Charge is the fundamental property of matter that
exhibits electrostatic attraction or repulsion in the presence of other matter
with charge.
• Electric charge is a characteristic property of many subatomic particles.
• The charges of free-standing particles are integer multiples of the elementary
charge e; we say that electric charge is quantized.
• Michael Faraday, in his electrolysis experiments, was the first to note the
discrete nature of electric charge. Robert Millikan's oil drop
experiment demonstrated this fact directly, and measured the elementary
charge.
 Coulomb’s Law

• By convention, the charge of an electron is negative, −e, while that of

a proton is positive, +e.
• Charged particles whose charges have the same sign repel one another, and
particles whose charges have different signs attract.
• Coulomb's law quantifies the electrostatic force between two particles by
asserting that the force is proportional to the product of their charges,
and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
• The charge of an antiparticle equals that of the corresponding particle, but
with opposite sign.
Electric field induced by a positive electric charge (left)
and a field induced by a negative electric charge (right).
 Quick Quiz
Three objects are brought close to each other, two at a time.
When objects A and B are brought together, they repel.
When objects B and C are brought together, they also repel.
Which of the following are true?
(a) Objects A and C possess charges of the same sign.
(b) Objects A and C possess charges of opposite sign.
(c) All three objects possess charges of the same sign.
(d) One object is neutral.
(e) Additional experiments must be performed to determine the signs of the
charges.
• The electric charge of a macroscopic object is the sum of the electric charges of
the particles that it is made up of. This charge is often small, because matter is
made of atoms, and atoms typically have equal numbers
of protons and electrons, in which case their charges cancel out, yielding a net
charge of zero, thus making the atom neutral.
• An ion is an atom (or group of atoms) that has lost one or more electrons, giving
it a net positive charge (cation), or that has gained one or more electrons, giving
it a net negative charge (anion).
• Monatomic ions are formed from single atoms, while polyatomic ions are formed
from two or more atoms that have been bonded together, in each case yielding
an ion with a positive or negative net charge.
• During the formation of macroscopic objects, constituent atoms and ions
usually combine to form structures composed of neutral ionic
compounds electrically bound to neutral atoms. Thus macroscopic objects tend
toward being neutral overall, but macroscopic objects are rarely perfectly net
neutral.
• Also, macroscopic objects made of conductive elements can more or less easily
take on or give off electrons, and then maintain a net negative or positive
charge indefinitely.
• Sometimes macroscopic objects contain ions distributed
throughout the material, rigidly bound in place, giving an overall
net positive or negative charge to the object.
When the net electric charge of an object is non-zero and motionless, the
phenomenon is known as static electricity. This can easily be produced by
rubbing two dissimilar materials together, such as
rubbing amber with fur or glass with silk.
In this way, non-conductive materials can be charged to a significant degree,
either positively or negatively. Charge taken from one material is moved to the
other material, leaving an opposite charge of the same magnitude behind.

The law of conservation of charge always applies, giving the object from which a
negative charge is taken a positive charge of the same magnitude, and vice versa.
Even when an object's net charge is zero, the charge can be distributed non-
uniformly in the object (e.g., due to an external electromagnetic field, or bound
polar molecules). In such cases, the object is said to be polarized.
The charge due to polarization is known as bound charge, while the charge on
an object produced by electrons gained or lost from outside the object is
called free charge. The motion of electrons in conductive metals in a specific
direction is known as electric current.
The SI unit of quantity of electric charge is the coulomb (symbol: C). The coulomb
is defined as the quantity of charge that passes through the cross section of
an electrical conductor carrying one ampere for one second This unit was
proposed in 1946 and ratified in 1948.The lowercase symbol q is often used to
denote a quantity of electric charge. The quantity of electric charge can be directly
measured with an electrometer, or indirectly measured with a ballistic
galvanometer.
The elementary charge (the electric charge of the proton) is defined as a
fundamental constant in the SI. The value for elementary charge, when expressed
in SI units, is exactly 1.602176634×10−19 C.
After discovering the quantized character of charge, in 1891 George
Stoney proposed the unit 'electron' for this fundamental unit of electrical
charge. (J. J. Thomson discovered the electron in 1897).
The unit is today referred to as elementary charge, fundamental unit of charge, or
simply denoted e, with the charge of an electron being −e. The charge of an
isolated system should be a multiple of the elementary charge e, even if at large
scales charge seems to behave as a continuous quantity.

The unit faraday is sometimes used in electrochemistry. One faraday is the

magnitude of the charge of one mole of elementary charges.
• Electric current is the flow of electric charge through an object. The most
common charge carriers are protons and electrons. The movement of any of
these charged particles constitutes an electric current.
• It be sufficient to speak of the conventional current without regard to whether it
is carried by positive charges moving in the direction of the conventional
current or by negative charges moving in the opposite direction.
• But if one looks at the microscopic situation, one sees there are many ways of
carrying an electric current, including: a flow of electrons; a flow of
electron holes that act like positive particles; and both negative and positive
particles (ions or other charged particles) flowing in opposite directions in
an electrolytic solution.
It is convenient to classify materials in terms of the ability of electrons to move
through the material:
Electrical conductors are materials in which some of the electrons are free electrons that
are not bound to atoms and can move relatively freely through the material; electrical
insulators are materials in which all electrons are bound to atoms and cannot move freely
through the material. Semiconductors are a third class of materials, and their electrical
properties are somewhere between those of insulators and those of conductors.

Beware that, in the common and important case of metallic wires, the
direction of the conventional current is opposite to the drift velocity of
the actual charge carriers; i.e., the electrons. This is a source of confusion
for beginners.
 Coulomb's law
Coulomb's inverse-square law, or simply Coulomb's law, is an
experimental law of physics that calculates the amount of force between
two electrically charged particles at rest. This electric force is conventionally
called the electrostatic force or Coulomb force. Although the law was known
earlier, it was first published in 1785 by French physicist Coulomb.

where ke is a constant called the Coulomb constant. The value of the Coulomb constant
depends on the choice of units. The SI unit of charge is the coulomb (C). The Coulomb
constant ke in SI units has the value,
Coulomb also showed that oppositely charged bodies attract according to an
inverse-square law:
Here, ke is a constant, q1 and q2 are the quantities of each charge, and the
scalar r is the distance between the charges.
The force is along the straight line joining the two charges. If the charges
have the same sign, the electrostatic force between them makes them repel; if
they have different signs, the force between them makes them attract.
The law states that the magnitude, or absolute value, of the attractive or repulsive
electrostatic force between two point charges is directly proportional to the
product of the magnitudes of their charges and inversely proportional to the
squared distance between them. Coulomb discovered that bodies with like
electrical charges repel:
It follows therefore from these three tests, that the repulsive force that the two
balls – [that were] electrified with the same kind of electricity – exert force on
each other, follows the inverse proportion of the square of the distance
 in 1785, the French physicist Charles-
Augustin de Coulomb published his first
three reports of electricity and magnetism
where he stated his law.

He used a torsion balance to study the

repulsion and attraction forces of charged
particles, and determined that the
magnitude of the electric force between
two point charges is directly proportional
to the product of the charges and
inversely proportional to the square of
the distance between them.
Being an inverse-square law, the law is similar to Isaac Newton's inverse-
square law of universal gravitation, but gravitational forces always make
things attract, while electrostatic forces make charges attract or repel.
Also, gravitational forces are much weaker than electrostatic forces.

Example: The electron and proton of a hydrogen atom are separated (on the
average) by a distance of approximately 5.3x10-11 m. Find the magnitudes of
the electric force and the gravitational force between the two particles.
References:
1. Wikipedia
2. R. A. Serway and J. W. Jewett, “Physics for Scientists and Engineers with Modern Physics”, 9th ed. (Chapter-23)

Lecture-3
Electric Field and Intensity,
Electric Potential,