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The field is depicted by electric field lines, lines which follow the direction of the electric field in space. The induced charge distribution in the sheet is not shown. The electric field is defined at each point in space as the force that would be experienced by an infinitesimally small stationary test charge at that point divided by the charge.
See Figure 1. To simplify, let the magnetic field point in the z-direction and vary with location x, and let the conductor translate in the positive x-direction with velocity v. Consequently, in the magnet frame where the conductor is moving, the Lorentz force points in the negative y-direction, perpendicular to both the velocity, and the B-field.
For the Earth, this could have been an external magnetic field. Early in its history the Sun went through a T-Tauri phase in which the solar wind would have had a magnetic field orders of magnitude larger than the present solar wind. [60] However, much of the field may have been screened out by the Earth's mantle.
An individual field line shows the direction of the vector field but not the magnitude. In order to also depict the magnitude of the field, field line diagrams are often drawn so that each line represents the same quantity of flux. Then the density of field lines (number of field lines per unit perpendicular area) at any location is ...
The lines can be constructed by measuring the strength and direction of the magnetic field at a large number of points (or at every point in space). Then, mark each location with an arrow (called a vector) pointing in the direction of the local magnetic field with its magnitude proportional to the strength of the magnetic field. Connecting ...
In addition, a moving charged body in a magnetic field experiences a force that is also proportional to its charge, in a direction perpendicular to both the field and the body's direction of motion. Using the vector cross product , F = q E + q v × B . {\displaystyle \mathbf {F} =q\mathbf {E} +q\mathbf {v} \times \mathbf {B} .}
Monopole moments have a 1/r rate of decrease, dipole moments have a 1/r 2 rate, quadrupole moments have a 1/r 3 rate, and so on. The higher the order, the faster the potential drops off. Since the lowest-order term observed in magnetic sources is the dipole term, it dominates at large distances.
A field has a consistent tensorial character wherever it is defined: i.e. a field cannot be a scalar field somewhere and a vector field somewhere else. For example, the Newtonian gravitational field is a vector field: specifying its value at a point in spacetime requires three numbers, the components of the gravitational field vector at that point.