4/5/2023 0 Comments Fieldlines forumIt doesn't matter whether the sphere has all the charge sitting on its surface or if the charge is spread out throughout its interior. The same field line pattern also forms around a uniformly charged sphere, which is why Coulomb's Law makes no distinction between such a sphere and a point charge. Drawing field lines for a collection of electric charges can help you identify patterns and symmetries that make calculations easier in practical applications.Īs an example for symmetry in electric field line patterns, recall that the field lines of a point charge form a star shape that looks the same in all directions. The use of electric field lines goes beyond mere visualization. The purpose of the field lines is to tell you in which direction that electric force would then point. As a physical quantity, the electric field at any given point in space tells you what the electric force on a test object would be if you were to place it there.īased on how the electric field is constructed (remember the analogy to Newtonian gravity), you get the electric force on an object of charge Q in an electric field of strength E by simply multiplying the two. To put it briefly: electric fields are would-be electric forces. So, we are drawing something that is not tangible because there appears to be nothing there. There is a new level of abstraction here because although the lines representing the electrostatic field begin and end on charged objects (more or less tangible entities), the lines themselves fill the empty space between the charges. Read this section, which discusses this concept and introduces a powerful way of visualizing the effects of charges on other charges: electric field lines. As we mentioned earlier, electric fields are a tool that helps us deal with situations where Coulomb's Law has to be applied to collections of several charged particles at once.
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