Electrostatics –

Coulomb’s Law
Lecture No 3
 Lecture Objectives
• Study of electrostatics with Coulomb’s law
• Definition of electric field
• Computation of electric field from discrete
and continuous charge distributions
• Scalar electric potential

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 Electrostatics as a Special Case of
Electromagnetics
Fundamental laws of Maxwell’s
classical equations
electromagnetics

Special Electro- Magneto- Electro- Geometric

cases statics statics magnetic Optics
waves


Statics: 0 Transmission
t
Line
Theory
Input from Circuit
other Theory Kirchoff’s
disciplines d  
Laws

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 Electrostatics
• Electrostatics is the branch of
electromagnetics dealing with the effects of
electric charges at rest.
• The fundamental law of electrostatics is
Coulomb’s law.

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 Electric Charge
• Electrical phenomena caused by friction are
part of our everyday lives, and can be
understood in terms of electrical charge.
• The effects of electrical charge can be
observed in the attraction/repulsion of various
objects when “charged.”
• Charge comes in two varieties called
“positive” and “negative.”

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 Electric Charge
• Objects carrying a net positive - -
charge attract those carrying a net + +
negative charge and repel those
carrying a net positive charge. + -

• Objects carrying a net negative charge attract

those carrying a net positive charge and repel
those carrying a net negative charge.
• On an atomic scale, electrons are negatively
charged and nuclei are positively charged.

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 Electric Charge
• Electric charge is inherently quantized such
that the charge on any object is an integer
multiple of the smallest unit of charge which is
the magnitude of the electron charge
e = 1.602  10-19 C.
• On the macroscopic level, we can assume that
charge is “continuous.”

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 COULOMB’S LAW

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 Coulomb’s Law
• Coulomb’s law is the “law of action” between
charged bodies.
• Coulomb’s law gives the electric force
between two point charges in an otherwise
empty universe.
• A point charge is a charge that occupies a
region of space which is negligibly small
compared to the distance between the point
charge and any other object.

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 Coulomb’s Law
Q1
r12 Q2 Unit vector in
direction of R12
F 12
Q1 Q2
Force due to Q1 F 12  aˆ R12
acting on Q2 4  0 r12
2

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 Coulomb’s Law
• The force on Q1 due to Q2 is equal in
magnitude but opposite in direction to the
force on Q2 due to Q1.

F 21   F 12

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 Electric Field
• Consider a point charge Q placed at the origin
of a coordinate system in an otherwise empty
universe. Qt

• A test charge Qt brought r

near Q experiences a force:
Q
QQt
F Qt  aˆ r
40 r 2

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 Electric Field
• The existence of the force on Qt can be
attributed to an electric field produced by Q.
• The electric field produced by Q at a point in
space can be defined as the force per unit
charge acting on a test charge Qt placed at that
point.
F Qt
E  lim
Qt 0 Q
t

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 Electric Field
• The electric field describes the effect of a
stationary charge on other charges
• It is an abstract “action-at-a-distance”
concept, very similar to the concept of a
gravity field.
• The basic units of electric field are newtons per
coulomb.
• In practice, we usually use volts per meter.

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 Electric Field

• For a point charge at the origin, the electric

field at any point is given by

E r   aˆ r
Q Qr

40 r 2
40 r 3

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 Electric Field
• For a point charge located at a point P’
described by a position vector r’
the electric field at P is given by
P
E r  
QR
40 R 3 R
r
where Q
r’
R  r  r
R  r  r O

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 Electric Field
• In electromagnetics, it is very popular to
describe the source in terms of primed
coordinates, and the observation point in
terms of unprimed coordinates.
• As we shall see, for continuous source
distributions we shall need to integrate over
the source coordinates.

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 Electric Field

• Using the principal of superposition, the

electric field at a point arising from multiple
point charges may be evaluated as

n
E r   
Qk R k
k 1 40 Rk
3

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 Continuous Distributions of
Charge
• Charge can occur as
– point charges (C) expressed as q
– volume charges (C/m3) expressed as s or qev
– surface charges (C/m2) expressed as r or qes
– line charges (C/m) expressed as  or qel

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 Continuous Distributions of
Charge
• Volume charge density

Qencl

r V’

qev r   lim
Qencl
V 0 V 

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 Continuous Distributions of
Charge
• Electric field due to volume charge density
V’
dv’ Qencl P

r r
qev r dv R
d E r  
40 R 3

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 Electric Field Due to Volume
Charge Density

qev r  R
E r  
1

40 V  R 3
dv

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 Continuous Distributions of
Charge
• Surface charge density

Qencl

r S’

qes r   lim
Qencl
S 0 S 

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 Continuous Distributions of
Charge
• Electric field due to surface charge density

Qencl

r
ds’
S’
r P

qes r ds R
d E r  
40 R 3

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 Electric Field Due to Surface
Charge Density

qes r  R
E r  
1

40 S  R 3
ds 

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 Continuous Distributions of
Charge
• Line charge density

r L’ Q
encl

qel r   lim
Qencl
L0 L

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 Continuous Distributions of
Charge
• Electric field due to line charge density

r L’ Q
encl r P

qel r dl  R
d E r  
40 R 3

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 Electric Field Due to Line Charge
Density

qel r  R
E r  
1

40 L R 3
dl 

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 Electrostatic Potential
• An electric field is a force field.
• If a body being acted on by a force is moved
from one point to another, then work is done.
• The concept of scalar electric potential
provides a measure of the work done in
moving charged bodies in an electrostatic
field.

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 Electrostatic Potential
• The work done in moving a test charge from
one point to another in a region of electric
field: F
b
a
q dl
b b
Wab    F  d l  q  E  d l
a a

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 Electrostatic Potential
• In evaluating line integrals, it is customary to
take the dl in the direction of increasing
coordinate value so that the manner in which
the path of integration is traversed is
unambiguously determined by the limits of
integration.
b a
x 3
3 5 Wab  q  E  aˆ x dx
5
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 Electrostatic Potential
• The electrostatic field is conservative:
– The value of the line integral depends only on the
end points and is independent of the path taken.
– The value of the line integral around any closed
path is zero.


C
E  d l  0

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 Electrostatic Potential
• The work done per unit charge in moving a
test charge from point a to point b is the
electrostatic potential difference between the two
points:
b
Wab
Vab    E  d l
q a

electrostatic potential difference

Units are volts.
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 Electrostatic Potential
• Since the electrostatic field is conservative we
can write
b P0 b
Vab    E  d l    E  d l   E  d l
a a P0

b  a 
  E  dl    E  dl 
 
P0  P0 
 V b   V a 
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 Electrostatic Potential
• Thus the electrostatic potential V is a scalar
field that is defined at every point in space.
• In particular the value of the electrostatic
potential at any point P is given by
P
V r     E  d l
P0
reference point

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 Electrostatic Potential
• The reference point (P0) is where the potential
is zero (analogous to ground in a circuit).
• Often the reference is taken to be at infinity so
that the potential of a point in space is
defined as

P
V r     E  d l


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 Electrostatic Potential and
Electric Field
• The work done in moving a point charge from
point a to point b can be written as

Wa b  Q Vab  QV b   V a 
b
 Q  E  d l
a

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 Electrostatic Potential and
Electric Field
• Along a short path of length l we have

W  QV  Q E  l
or
V   E  l
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 Electrostatic Potential and
Electric Field
• Along an incremental path of length dl we
have dV   E  d l
• Recall from the definition of directional
derivative:
dV  V  d l

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 Electrostatic Potential and
Electric Field
• Thus:

E  V

the “del” or “nabla” operator

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 Electrostatic Potential of a Point
Charge at the Origin
r r
V r     E  d l    aˆ r
Q
 aˆ r dr 
40 r 
2
 

Q dr  Q
 
40 r r 2

40 r
P

r
spherically symmetric

Q
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 Electrostatic Potential Resulting
from Multiple Point Charges

R2
Q2 P(R,q,f)

r 2 r R1
Q1
r 1
n
V r   
Qk
O
k 1 40 Rk
No longer spherically symmetric!

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 Electrostatic Potential Resulting
from Continuous Charge
Distributions
qel r  dl 
V r  
1

40 L R
 line charge

qes r  ds
V r  
1
40 S
 surface charge
R
qev r  dv
V r  
1
40 V
 volume charge
R
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 Summary
Q1 Q2
• Coulomb’s law F 12  aˆ R 12
4  0 r122

E r  
QR
• Electric field 40 R 3
qev r  R qes r  R qel r  R
E r  
1
  1
S R3 E r  
1
L R 3 dl 
40 V R 3
dv E r  ds 
40 40

• Scalar electric potential

• Electrostatic Potential E  V

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 Next Time
• Charged dipole
• Electric fields and potentials of charged dipole

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 THANK YOU

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