Scribd
Upload
16 views

lecture 37 (1)-1

Unit 5

Uploaded by

Priyanshu Patel
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
16 views

lecture 37 (1)-1

Unit 5

Uploaded by

Priyanshu Patel
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

Coulomb’s law

Coulomb proposed the laws for interaction between static electric charges. Which are as:
First Law: Like Charges repel each other and unlike charges attract each other
Second Law: Magnitude of the force exerted by the charges on each other is inversely
proportional to the square of the distance between them and is directly proportional of the
product of their charges

and

Electrostatic Potential:

The electrostatic force is a conservative force. This means that the work it does on a particle
depends only on the initial and final position of the particle, and not on the path followed.
With each conservative force, a potential energy can be associated. The introduction of the
potential energy is useful since it allows us to apply conservation of mechanical energy which
simplifies the solution of a large number of problems.

The potential energy U associated with a conservative force F is defined in the following
manner

where U(P0) is the potential energy at the reference position P0 (usually U(P0) = 0) and the
path integral is along any convenient path connecting P0 and P1. Since the force F is
conservative, the integral in eq.(25.1) will not depend on the path chosen. If the work W is
positive (force and displacement pointing in the same direction) the potential energy at
P1 will be smaller than the potential energy at P0. If energy is conserved, a decrease in the
potential energy will result in an increase of the kinetic energy. If the work W is negative
(force and displacement pointing in opposite directions) the potential energy at P1 will be
larger than the potential energy at P0. If energy is conserved, an increase in the potential
energy will result in an decrease of the kinetic energy. If In electrostatic problems the
reference point P0 is usually chosen to correspond to an infinite distance, and the potential
energy at this reference point is taken to be equal to zero.
To describe the potential energy associated with a charge distribution the concept of
the electrostatic potential V is introduced. The electrostatic potential V at a given position is
defined as the potential energy of a test particle divided by the charge q of this object:

we have assumed that the reference point P0 is taken at infinity, and that the electrostatic
potential at that point is equal to 0. Since the force per unit charge is the electric field (see
Chapter 23), eq. (25.3) can be rewritten as

The unit of electrostatic potential is the volt (V), and 1 V = 1 J/C = 1 Nm/C. Equation (25.4)
shows that as the unit of the electric field we can also use V/m.

A common used unit for the energy of a particle is the electron-volt (eV) which is defined as
the change in kinetic energy of an electron that travels over a potential difference of 1 V.

You might also like