Topic outline

  • General

  • Study Unit 1

    • Electrostatic force File

      Matter consists of atoms. An atom consists of small, dense, positively charged nucleus with the negative electrons orbiting about the nucleus, in a manner similar to that of planets orbiting about the sun in the solar system. Any two bodies in the universe exerts a force on each other which is perpendicular to the product of their mases and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. the force between charged bodies is called electric force. this force is attractive if the bodies carry charges of opposite sign and repulsive if the charges are of the same sign. In this study unit the simple electrostatic phenomena and electric force is discussed in details.

  • Study Unit 2

    • Electric Field Intensity File

      This unit is continuous of electric force it mainly describes electric field intensity and gauss’s law of electrostatics. A very useful concept is the electric field, which is defined as the force per unit charge. Every point in space has a unique electric field associated with it. We can define the flux of the electric field through a given surface. This leads us to Gauss’s law, which is an alternative way of stating Coulomb’s law. In cases involving sufficient symmetry, it is much quicker to calculate the electric field via Gauss’s law than via Coulomb’s law and direct integration. Finally, we discuss the energy density in the electric field, which provides another way of calculating the potential energy of a system.

  • Study Unit 3

    • Electric Potential File

      The first half of this Unit deals mainly with the potential associated with an electric field. The second half covers a number of mathematical topics that will be critical in our treatment of electromagnetism. The potential difference between two points is defined to be the negative line integral of the electric field. Equivalently, the electric field equals the negative gradient of the potential. Just as the electric field is the force per unit charge, the potential is the potential energy per unit charge. This unit involves a number of examples involving the calculation of the potential due to a given charge distribution, this unit also describes more bout electric potential. One important example is the dipole, which consists of two equal and opposite charges. Turning to mathematics, we introduce the divergence, which gives a measure of the flux of a vector field out of a small volume. We prove Gauss’s theorem (or the divergence theorem) and then use it to write Gauss’s law in differential form.