Table of Contents
First, let's begin with…
1 Electrostatics Cheat Sheet
2 An atom
We begin by recognizing the fact that it's the electron that can move around in an atom..
For now, materials could be either Conductors or Insulators.
- Conductors
- \(e^-\) move freely
- Think! Metal
- Insulators
- \(e^-\) cannot move freely
- Think! Wood/Glass/Plastic
Objects have different charge properties KBhPHYS201AtomChargeProps, and they interact with each other in specific ways:
- Like changes tend to repel
- Different changes tend to attract
2.0.1 The Rods and Paper Experiment
Recall the day one at-home experiment KBhPHYS201D1AtHomeActivity. Let's see how the interactions we saw relates to the physical world:
See KBhPHYS201ElectrostaticPolarization, the analysis of the Rods and Paper Experiment
2.0.2 The Electroscope
See KBhPHYS201Electroscope, the electroscope.
3 Quantifying electrical force!
See KBhPHYS201ColoumbsLaw, Coulomb's Law
4 Gravity + Gravitational Fields!
Each object has what's called gravitational field. Surrounding each object has what is effectively many tiny vectors getting weaker and weaker as you move away from the Earth. You could calculate the force of gravity just by knowing…
- The mass of what you are calculating.
- How far away is the other object's mass.
Then, out pops a value that tells you the magnitude of force that an object would exert on another object w.r.t. their mass that was dropped right where that vector was.
To see how we could do this, and how it relates to electrostatics, see KBhPHYS201GravitationalFields Newton's Law of Gravitation.
5 Electric Fields
See KBhPHYS201ElectricFields Electric Fields.