Category Electrostatics

Overview of electrostatics and electricity

Electrostatics involves electric charges namely positive and negative charges, the forces between them which is known as electric force, the field that surrounds them, and their behaviour in materials. Coulomb’s law is the simple relation that governs electrostatic interactions and the field around the charges is described using the concept of the electric field. Coulomb’s law is an inverse square law that gives the force between two charges kept at some distance (say $r$ ) apart from each other.

Like Coulomb’s law, the law of gravitation is also an inverse square law but gravitational interactions are only attractive in nature and electrical interactions are attractive as well as repulsive depending on the nature of interacting charges. Charges of the same kind repel each other and charge different kinds, i.e. one charge positive and other negatives, attract each other.

One more thing electric interactions are much stronger than gravitational interactions and gravitational force is almost negligible in comparison to the forces of electric origin. This is always true when we study the interactions of atomic and subatomic particles. But when we study objects very large in size say a person, a planet, or satellites, the net governing force, in this case, is a gravitational force not electric.

Now coming to the properties of electric charges we know that electric charge is quantized and it also obeys the law of conservation means total charge remains conserved.

Now we will discuss why we study electrostatics and where it finds its applications. Electric interactions are of immense importance in chemistry and biology and have many technological applications. Concepts of electricity proved to be of basic importance for studying atomic physics, nuclear physics, and solid-state physics. It also finds importance in studying advanced-level physics.