Lecture

Electric Fields and Potentials

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In course

PHYS-114: General physics : electromagnetism

Le cours traite des concepts de l'électromagnétisme, avec le support d'expériences. Les sujets traités inclus l'électrostatique, le courant électrique et circuits, la magnétostatique, l'induction électromagnétique, les équations de Maxwell, et les ondes él ...

Description

This lecture covers the concept of electric fields and potentials, starting with the calculation of the electric field due to point charges and collections of charges. It then explores the relationship between electric field strength and potential energy, emphasizing the significance of electric potential in understanding electrostatics. The lecture also delves into the potential of point charges and continuous charge distributions, illustrating how these properties depend on the source charges. Additionally, it discusses the behavior of charged disks and the relationship between electric field lines and equipotential lines. The session concludes with an explanation of charges in electric fields, introducing the concept of electronvolts as a measure of energy in electric systems.

Instructors (3)

Jan Hugo Dil

Teaching & PhD Past EPFL PhD Students Stefan Muff, Mauro Fanciulli, Fei Guo Courses Physics III PHYS-200 The students understand and apply the physics of fluids, and the basics of electromagnetism and electronic schemes Awards Latsis prize EPFL 2015 Heinrich Rohrer Rising Medal SSSJ 2014

Lesya Shchutska

Current Work Our research is focused on testing the boundaries of the Standard Model of particle physics and on looking for new phenomena which might explain unanswered puzzles in the fundamental description of the Universe. The examples of such puzzles would be dark matter nature, matter-antimatter asymmetry of the Universe or very small but non-zero neutrino masses.The main instrument for these tasks is the LHCb detector at CERN, where the analyses of the data collected in the LHC proton-proton collisions

Fabio Avino

Education PhD in Physics | Turbulence at the boundary of toroidal plasmas with open and closed magnetic flux surfaces 2011 – 2015 EPFL Master in Physics | Rifrattometria su Plasmi di Interesse Termonucleare 2008 – 2010 La Sapienza Bachelor in Physics | Fluorescenza X portatile per l'analisi dei beni culturali 2005 – 2008 La Sapienza Professionals experiences Physicist - Senior Fellow 2017–2020 CERNScientist 2016–2017 EPFL Teaching & PhD P

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Physics

Electromagnetism: Electrodynamics

Related concepts (32)

Electromagnetic field

An electromagnetic field (also EM field or EMF) is a classical (i.e. non-quantum) field produced by moving electric charges. It is the field described by classical electrodynamics (a classical field theory) and is the classical counterpart to the quantized electromagnetic field tensor in quantum electrodynamics (a quantum field theory). The electromagnetic field propagates at the speed of light (in fact, this field can be identified as light) and interacts with charges and currents.

Magnetic field

A magnetic field is a vector field that describes the magnetic influence on moving electric charges, electric currents, and magnetic materials. A moving charge in a magnetic field experiences a force perpendicular to its own velocity and to the magnetic field. A permanent magnet's magnetic field pulls on ferromagnetic materials such as iron, and attracts or repels other magnets.

Volta potential

The Volta potential (also called Volta potential difference, contact potential difference, outer potential difference, Δψ, or "delta psi") in electrochemistry, is the electrostatic potential difference between two metals (or one metal and one electrolyte) that are in contact and are in thermodynamic equilibrium. Specifically, it is the potential difference between a point close to the surface of the first metal and a point close to the surface of the second metal (or electrolyte). The Volta potential is named after Alessandro Volta.

Magnetic vector potential

In classical electromagnetism, magnetic vector potential (often called A) is the vector quantity defined so that its curl is equal to the magnetic field: . Together with the electric potential φ, the magnetic vector potential can be used to specify the electric field E as well. Therefore, many equations of electromagnetism can be written either in terms of the fields E and B, or equivalently in terms of the potentials φ and A. In more advanced theories such as quantum mechanics, most equations use potentials rather than fields.

Electric dipole moment

The electric dipole moment is a measure of the separation of positive and negative electrical charges within a system, that is, a measure of the system's overall polarity. The SI unit for electric dipole moment is the coulomb-meter (C⋅m). The debye (D) is another unit of measurement used in atomic physics and chemistry. Theoretically, an electric dipole is defined by the first-order term of the multipole expansion; it consists of two equal and opposite charges that are infinitesimally close together, although real dipoles have separated charge.

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