Scribd
Upload
100 views

Electrostatics: Conservation of Charge and Coulomb'S Law

Electrons are conserved within a system and cannot be created or destroyed. Atoms are neutral when they have an equal number of protons and electrons, becoming charged ions when electrons are gained or lost. Charge is quantized with the smallest unit being the electron's charge. Coulomb's law states that the electrostatic force between two charged objects is directly proportional to the product of their charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

Uploaded by

ash256
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
100 views

Electrostatics: Conservation of Charge and Coulomb'S Law

Electrons are conserved within a system and cannot be created or destroyed. Atoms are neutral when they have an equal number of protons and electrons, becoming charged ions when electrons are gained or lost. Charge is quantized with the smallest unit being the electron's charge. Coulomb's law states that the electrostatic force between two charged objects is directly proportional to the product of their charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

Uploaded by

ash256
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 4

Electrostatics

CONSERVATION OF CHARGE AND COULOMBS LAW

Conservation of charge

Electrons are not created or destroyed,


they are just transferred from one material
to another, thus charge is conserved within
the system.

In a neutral atom, there are as many


protons as electrons, so there is no net
charge; the positive balances the negative
exactly. When an electron is removed or
gained by an atom, it is no longer neutral,
and is said to be charged. We call
charged atoms ions.

Charge is made up of elementary units


called quanta. Charge is quantized, with
the smallest quantum of charge being that
of the electron.

Charged Particle Interactions

The attraction between a proton and an


electron can be imagined as the proton
creating an electric field because of its
positive charge, and the electron
experiencing a force produced by the
field

Coulombs law

Discovered by Charles coulomb, Coulombs


law states that the force between two
objects varies directly with the product of
their charges and inversely with the square
of the separation distance.

d is the distance between the charged


particles, q1 represents the quantity of
charge of one particle, q2 represents the
quantity of charge of the other particle.
k represents 1/(4pi*permittivity of free space)
(lower case epsilon), i.e., a measure of how
easy it is for an electric field to pass through
space

Only applies when


the two objects
are much smaller
than the distance
between them

You might also like